was our play-room; and we asked him how he liked being a lodger. We
asked him many things, besides. Was he ill, or only very tired, that he
lay on his bed so much? Did he have his dinner up there, or did he go
down to get it as we did? Did he eat what he liked, or what Miss Miller
liked to give him? Was he fond of Miss Miller? We hated her because
once she had seen Willy leaning out of the window and had told father,
who had had the horrid screen put up.
I don't remember what answers he made to all these questions, piped
forth in eager little voices, whose words tripped each other up in
their hurry, but I know he said he thought the screen a babyish
contrivance and advised us, now we had taken it down, not to put it
back again. I reminded Willy that father would be very cross if we did
not, and Willy reminded me that father being out for two nights,
_that_ didn't matter. We cautioned our neighbour not to let Miss
Miller know the window was open or she would be at her tale-telling
again, and he, on his part, advised our keeping the fact of his being
now such friends with us secret from the servants. He hated servants,
he told us, as much as Miss Miller; and Willy admitted that ours were
certainly sneaks and not to be trusted. I told him that Willy and I
often had secrets, and volunteered the information that I had once kept
one from mother for two whole nights!
He should think we were very lonely with father and mother away, and
only cats of servants left to us, he said; and asked what we should
like best in the world to play with.
We both with one breath cried "a kitten;" because that was the one
coveted treasure which had been persistently denied us hitherto.
Then he said that he most fortunately happened to possess the sweetest
kitten in all the world, of which he would be happy to make us a
present; and Willy said, in deep-toned satisfaction, "would he really,
though?" and I got on my feet to jump for joy.
It was just then that nurse's voice came calling us to say good-bye to
our father and mother. So we slammed down the window in our new
friend's face, and pushed the screen back into position, and, bursting
with our secret, Willy and I went galloping down the stairs.
Oh, those uncarpeted, twisting stairs! Now that Willy and I have "grown
up and gone away," do they creak gaily beneath the happy feet of
children still, I wonder, or only groan with the heavy tread of sober
grown-ups? Often and often now, while
"In the elders' seat
Resting with quiet feet,"
I fall asleep and dream I come to the foot of those enchanted stairs,
where for my little companion and me stupid law and irksome restraint
ceased, and the liberty we craved began. Then, once more, Willy and I,
whose hands will never meet again on earth, mount hand in hand to the
region we loved.
We drove with our father and mother to the station, and, coming back,
found we had the tiresome formality of our nursery tea to get through
before we were free to make tracks for our happy hunting-ground above.
The young man was waiting there, before his open window, his hands in
his trousers-pockets. We tore down the screen, flung up our own window.
"Have you got it?" we called to him, breathlessly. "Is it there? The
kitten?"
It was in his coat-pocket; a little sandy kitten which trembled
exceedingly through all its fluffy fur, and piteously mewed. He held it
forth to us, finger and thumb about its tiny neck, across the narrow
way; but stretch as far as we could we could not reach it. Willy
undertook to catch it if it were thrown, but the young man said that
for worlds he would not endanger the life of the kitten, and I implored
him to run no risks.
"What is that standing up by the side of your bed?" Willy asked him,
pointing. "It was not there before--that long board?"
It was a plank, the young man informed us. He was going to make it into
a box. He was a carpenter by trade. Didn't we know it?
We told him no, and artlessly informed him we had thought he was a
gentleman, assuring him politely at the same time we were glad he was
not.
Then Willy suggested that the plank should bridge the space from his
room to ours, and that the kitten should be induced to walk on it.
The young man welcomed the idea as an excellent one, but feared when
Kitty saw the great depth below she might turn giddy and fall. Done in
the dark, now, she would not see, nor have any fear.
But nurse made us go to bed before dark we told him, and we so longed
for the precious kitten.
We should know it would be there, he said. Leave the screen down, and
the window open all night, and we should know it would be there, and
could bring it its breakfast, the first thing in the morning.
With this prospect we were obliged to be content; but although at
present, separated from our new treasure, we stayed in its
neighbourhood as long as we could, learning from the obliging young man
many wrinkles for the education and upbringing of the kitten, which
would have to live in the play-room, its bread and milk obtained by
cunning and subterfuge from under nurse's nose.
Inexpressibly I longed to have the little thing in my possession; for
with its present owner, despite his love for it, it seemed less happy
than I could wish--stowed away, heedless of its feelings, in his
coat-pocket, or exposed on the narrow window-ledge, where it shivered,
and mewed, and squeezed up to shelter, in an agony of terror lest it
might fall.
We stayed with it until we were called to bed, but it was not of the
kitten alone we talked. It gave us much pleasure to find what interest
our new friend took in us. He even troubled to inquire where, exactly,
in our house, which was built like Miss Miller's, did we sleep--how
near to mother's room, how far from the servants? As you went up from
the back passage to the great square front landing, our mother's door
was the one that faced you--he knew that--
We laughed, and told him _no_, and cried out in our new delightful
friendliness how stupid he was! That was our nursery door, and then
came our night nursery, and then mother's, and--so on.
It was with much reluctance we tore ourselves away when nurse called;
the wind from the open window blew chill upon us as we nodded good-bye
to our friend. He waved the mewing kitten to us in farewell. It
protested loudly, its little fluffy hind legs clawing despairingly at
the empty air.
* * * * *
In the afternoon of the next day our parents were home again, brought
back by a telegram which told them that their house had been robbed,
the strong box in our mother's room broken open, and all the easily
portable articles of plate taken from the housemaid's pantry.
We had policemen in the house, all the morning, policemen were closeted
with our father when he came home. Willy, in a suddenly disorganised
household, free from nursery rule, trotted about, proud of his courage
in thus daring, at a policeman's heels. Now and again, I would hear him
coming at a rush upstairs to report progress to me, who would not leave
the play-room.
All the bars of the doors and shutters were untouched. The thief must
have been let into the house, the policeman said; and our father, who
trusted all his servants, was furious with the policeman.
A policeman wasn't a man to be afraid of when you knew him; why
wouldn't I come and see this one? He--Willy, quite a hero that
morning--would take care of me.
Then away, with excited face and flying feet, downstairs again. And
presently, a quieter step upon the stairs--a step I knew well then,
hear often in the lonely silence now, shall surely know amid the sound
of all the myriad feet that tread the golden floor when I hear it
again--and my mother was in the room.
"Where is my little girl, and what is she hiding away for? And what
have you got in your lap, and why are you crying, Polly?" she asked.
Then she turned back my little skirt which hid it, and there was the
kitten; sobbing wildly, I flew up and pushed it into her arms.
"The man--the man at the window--promised it," I cried, incoherently.
"And I wanted it because it was so unhappy--and we left the window
open--and I loved it so. And it had to walk the plank--and Willy and me
thought it was asleep, and I picked it up--and it was dead."
Soon, lying with the dead kitten in her arms, I had sobbed out
something of the story. "It is a secret--a secret," I told her, wildly;
"don't let Willy and the man at the window know I told!"
She carried me away, before the policeman and my father had mounted to
the attic. It was Willy, shaken and frightened now, who had to tell the
story of the unscrewed screen, the open window, the plank laid across.
They said it was the young man at the window who came over on the
plank, sitting on it and pulling himself along; they said he brought
the kitten, as he had promised, having first choked the life out of it
lest it should mew, and wake the house. They said that when they caught
the robber, Willy and I would have to go and look at him and say, "That
is the man." We used to lie shaking in our beds at night, dreading the
hour when we should be called on to do this duty.
But they never got the jewellery back, they never caught the robber.
As time went on, Willy, who was always brave for his age, grew braver,
and would often declare he, if policemen were present, and the robber
in hand-cuffs, would not be afraid to look upon him; but be sure that
I, who thought of the murdered kitten, had never a wish to see the
young man with the prominent black eyes and the runaway chin again.
* * * * *
I made a pilgrimage to that wide street the other day, and stopped
before that big old house where we two had lived as children, where I
had played so contentedly second fiddle to Willy. Willy, who was so
eager to act the leading part, so determined to enjoy, to do, to
conquer; Willy
"Whose part in all the pomp that fills
The circuit of the summer hills
Is that his grave is green!"
I stepped into the narrow passage between the two houses, and looking
up, saw that the present neighbours, friendlily inclined, had slung a
rope across from window to window, upon which towels hung to dry. I
could see only the projecting ledge of the window through which our
little faces used to peep and the projecting ledge of that upon which
the kitten had shivered and mewed. But I looked long at these, and at
the tiny slip of blue sky above, and then came home and wrote this
story.
A BROKEN BOOT
"Oh, the insufferable eyes of these poor might-have-beens."
Every morning of the spring and early summer he had walked down that
sun- and shadow-flecked suburban road, and rested on that particular
iron chair. The butcher's and fishmonger's boys going their rounds, the
policeman on his beat, the postman wearily footing it, the daily
governess returning from her morning's occupation, had become used to
his appearance there; and he watched each one going upon his or her
business, wistful-eyed.
To-day, on one of the chairs planted by the thoughtfulness of the
ever-solicitous Town Council at intervals along the road, a tramp had
also placed himself. He was a tramp of a dirty and unprepossessing
appearance, and having cast a sidelong glance at the well-dressed,
handsome, and distinguished-looking young man beside him, he had begun
in hoarse, faint tones to beg of him. The voice was evidently that of a
hungry man; but to the appeal no response was made, unless there was
reply of a sort in a painfully crimsoning cheek and an averted gaze.
The tramp pointed to his feet, the ragged boots grey with dust of weary
miles, the naked toe peeping through. The gentleman faintly shook the
head that he continued to hold aside. With an effort the tramp got upon
his feet.
"D--n you!" he said. "May your belly go as empty as mine. May hell-fire
blister your feet as mine are blistered!"
The man left alone upon the iron bench looked after the tramp shuffling
painfully away, with no anger or condemnation in his eyes, only a
submissive sadness.
"Poor devil!" he said. "Poor devil! What a beast I must seem to him."
Once again his fingers, hopeless as his eyes, felt over the region of
his coat and waistcoat-pockets, wandered nervelessly to his
trousers-pockets--empty all! How many a time had they flown there in
the last few weeks to make the same discovery--a discovery causing a
shock at first, surprise, incredulity, anger; of late, mechanically
only, quite hopelessly.
And only a short time ago his pockets had been so well lined! He had
been in debt, it is true, but money had been forthcoming for who cared
to take. No beggar, however "professional," however visibly lying, had
ever asked of him in vain. He had squandered, in a society his father's
son should never have known, the fortune his father had left him; his
extravagance had been mad, his self-indulgence unlimited; but it must
be told of him that the occasion on which he most bitterly felt his
present poverty was such an one as this. He missed so much--all that
made life worth living in that foolish whirl "from gilded bar to gilded
bar" which was all his manhood's experience: his credit at his
tailor's, the cigars he had smoked and given away, his daily games of
billiards (the one thing at which he had excelled in all his wasted
life was billiards, his fingers sometimes itched with the longing to
feel the cue in his hand again), all the thousand extravagances of such
a young man's day. But up to the present it was this alone which made
poverty intolerable,--the having to refuse when Want asked of him.
He watched the tramp hobbling painfully into the distance, and in his
pale blue eyes came that pricking which is of tears.
"His blistered feet!" he said. "His blistered feet!"
And then very slowly he lifted one of his own long legs and laid it at
the ankle upon the other knee, and touching his slender, high-arched
foot very gingerly, he bent his head and examined his own boot.
Yes; there, sure enough, was the crack in the leather he had first
discovered yesterday, and which had caused him a sleepless night. The
first crack in his last pair of boots!
The lower lip of that small mouth which had been used to laugh at such
foolish nothings, and which now so easily drooped to grieving, fell
open as he looked. The crack was quite close to the sole and was
scarcely noticeable yet, but it would take--how few days! to widen to a
considerable gap! Then the people of the town in which he had been
born, through which he had ridden his father's horses, and driven his
father's carriages, would notice that he walked about in broken boots!
To-day he had been careful to come by back ways to that favourite road
whose sunshine and shadow he had run over so often as a boy; to his
seat on that chair which was placed beneath the hedge of the garden in
whose house he had been born.
Three months ago, when to his overwhelming astonishment it was first
made clear to him that he had no longer a penny under heaven, he had
gone in his bewilderment to his brother, a man whose share of the
patrimony had not been squandered--had been put out to usury rather,
bringing in thirty, forty, a hundredfold--a man living in luxury and
holding the respect of his fellow-townsmen.
"You can come to me," the brother had said. "Eat at my table, sleep
beneath my roof. I shall not turn my back upon my brother. But I shall
not pay any bills for you, nor shall I allow you a farthing of
money--you have shown us the use you make of money. You will find it
inconvenient to be without, and I advise you therefore to get work."
So, for three months he had availed himself of his brother's hospitality,
and the brother had kept his word. For three months he had crossed in
the muddiest part of the street because he had feared to look the
crossing-sweeper in the face, he had avoided the placarded blind man,
the paralytic woman who had known him well. He carefully made _detours_
to escape these, and the shoeblack boys with whom he had been held in
high favour. As for the people of his own class--the world is not all
unkind, but it is very busy, very forgetful--none remembered to seek
him. He had been surrounded by associates of a sort; and he found
himself quite alone.
For the first week or so he had thought it would be an easy thing to
find employment; a few rebuffs where he had looked for a helping hand,
a curt refusal or two, seemed to show him it was an impossibility. He
had no knowledge of book-keeping, he could not take a clerkship;
business men, with a mere glance at his handsome, delicate features, at
the shrinking, deprecating glance of his eyes, at his white, nervous
fingers, his faultless dress, decided that he was no good.
"Work? Yes. But at what can I work?" he had asked his brother at
length, flushing and hesitating; for since he had been a recipient of
his bounty he had become afraid of his highly-respected relatives, and
of the wife who looked at him with hard eyes as he took his place at
the table.
To that question no answer but a sour smile of a dragged-down lip and a
shrug of the shoulder had come, followed by the reminder that there was
always a crossing to sweep.
"I would rather sweep a crossing than lead the life you are leading,"
the brother had said.
And the other had acquiesced. It would be better, certainly; but--
For a young man of aristocratic appearance and faultlessly cut clothes
to take a place at a crossing in his native town, and beg of the
passers-by, some of whom would be personal friends, for coppers,
requires moral courage; he had been all his life, hence his
misfortunes, a moral coward.
So, of late, only spasmodically, and with a hopelessness that prepared
defeat, did he make efforts to find occupation. But he was not
naturally an idle man nor in all directions incompetent, and he watched
the people passing to office, shop, workroom, with a gaze which had
grown unspeakably wistful.
* * * * *
When the hour for the midday meal arrived, he had been wont to return
to his brother's house, but to-day he had something else to do.
The road being emptied of the stream of passers-by which flowed more
fully at that time, he got up and walked to the gate of the house where
he had been born, and looked long within, upon the garden. It had
always been a beautiful garden, full of flowering shrubs, and wide
lawns, and winding, box-edged paths. Very little had it altered since
to him it had seemed all the world, and he had the fancy to follow now
about its sunny, shadowy ways into all its pleasant haunts, the figure
of a little boy who had played there long ago.
It had been a lonely child who had played there, his only brother being
too old to play, and he had gone about the garden-ways, carrying his
absurd jumble of childish fancies, incredible aspirations, baby
ambitions, on untiring little feet. It pleased the young man at the
gate to follow him in fancy, from spot to spot, always in the sunshine,
always with flowers around him, and the whisper of trees about him, and
the song of birds overhead.
Leaving behind him the gay flower-beds upon which the creeper-covered
house looked forth, into many a leafy nook and shrub-bound fastness the
phantom little form ran happily. Where the trees grew tall and close
above an undergrowth of shepherd's-parsley and blue-bell had been a
favourite resort of the child's. When the eyes of the young man
followed him there, and saw him stop beside the smooth trunk of a
silver birch, he knew that a new knife had been given him that day, and
that he was going to carve his own name upon the bark. He knew that,
the task being accomplished, the child would fetch his mother, and lead
her to the tree to see how deep the knife cut, and how always--always
the name would be there!
Once, being tired with overmuch play, the child had fallen asleep
against that tree, and had wakened to hear his mother's voice
calling,--
* * * * *
The young man came back to the iron bench, his figure drooping. The
lower lip had fallen open, showing the small, regular teeth. Into the
face, "accustomed to refusals," into the wistful gaze of the pale blue
eyes, something of awe had crept. Presently he put up his boot upon his
knee, and once more his eyes fell upon the crack in the side. He moved
his foot within the boot--certainly a bulging showed; by to-morrow the
stocking would be seen.
To-morrow! Yes. He nodded his handsome head with eyes upon the boot and
breathed the word to himself.
How long ago it seemed since this tragedy of the broken boot had
befallen! Could it have been but yesterday? Was that possible?
His great need had developed his strategical powers, and accident had
seemed to further his design. Quick upon the discovery, he had
encountered his brother's page on his way to his brother's shoemaker,
bearing that relative's shoes to be repaired. Seizing the opportunity,
he had hastily divested himself of his own boot and had added that to
the page's burden.
His spirits so easily arose; such a load by that simple manoeuvre had
been lifted from his heart! He pushed his feet into his slippers and
came whistling downstairs to lunch. He had a perfect ear, and his
whistle was most melodious and sweet; the canaries in the dining-room
windows awoke and joined in shrilly. His brother, standing, with sour,
sarcastic face, upon the hearth, held fastidiously between finger and
thumb an article which apparently it was not agreeable to him to touch.
"I met Payne taking my boots," he said; "he had managed to get hold of
one of yours by mistake. I rescued it. I think we don't employ the same
bootmaker."
* * * * *
The young man's cheek did not burn any longer as he recalled that
incident. He felt nothing now, no anger, no bitterness. To such as he
it is so easy to forgive. Forgiveness had ever flowed from him in sheer
weakness. It had been the habit of his life to love and admire his
brother--he loved and admired him still. He did not think that he
himself would have been quite so hard on a poor devil in his place; but
his brother was a strong man and he a weak one--no doubt his brother
was right.
It was certain he was not a cruel man--did he not owe him the bread he
ate? Had he not shed tears over the death of a dog a day or two before?
The dog had been in incurable pain, and a pill which had been procured
from the chemist had caused that pain instantly to cease. The master
had given the order of execution, and had turned away from the gaze of
the suffering brute with the waters of sensibility in his eyes.
And how quietly the dog had died! One instant in convulsions of pain,
and the next still--quite still! The young man who had carried with him
from childhood a great dread of death had been much impressed. After
all, could it be so terrible?
Only one little pill had sufficed to produce that great change--would
suffice to kill two or three dogs, the chemist had said. But the young
man had brought away with him a second dose for fear of accident. As he
looked with unseeing eyes at the broken boot, his finger and thumb held
the second little pill securely in the corner of his waistcoat pocket.
He was afraid of death; but, as a child believes, he believed in God.
Through the recklessness, the wildness, the "joyous folastries" of
youth there had clung to him still the feeling that God was above him;
there beyond the stars; he had felt His smile sometimes, or grown cold
beneath His frown. He had not read, nor thought; nor had he listened to
clever talk on the absurdities of a worn-out faith, the uselessness of
an obsolete creed. His business had been with enjoying himself
simply--with none of those things. Of every other foolishness on earth
his lips had babbled, but not blasphemies. He had not trodden the
downward path with lingering steps, he had gone precipitately to his
ruin; but at least his eyes had been on the stars.
It was for this reason, perhaps, that, although he sat there, a
miserable failure, driven by the heartless might of the world to the
last extremity, there was yet a light upon his brow, and about his
weakly-parted lips a sweetness sometimes absent from brows and lips of
more admirable men.