"And then it was all clear. I had to square myself with you. Suddenly I
knew that that was what would wipe out that Lie and give me a fresh
start. It was like a sort of revelation. You see, Harrie, I knew that
you thought I was pretty fine, and you just had to be set straight."
"I--I haven't changed my mind at all about you," said Dick Harrington
timidly. "And you won the game after all."
Bill Burton leaned over the younger boy. His hand groped for Dick's
shoulder and clutched it.
"I didn't win the game," he whispered tensely. "The game wasn't really
played at Chancellor's Hill at all. It was played in the algebra class.
It was lost when I lied, and it was won a minute later when you told the
truth. And I guess I'm pretty glad you told the truth."
"So am I," murmured Dick very softly.
They both breathed deeply. It had been a notable victory.
* * * * *
Next morning, between breakfast and Sunday service, Dick Harrington
surreptitiously borrowed his roommate's safety razor, and shaved with
shining eyes.
FOOTNOTE:
[K] Reprinted from "The Boy Scouts' Year Book." Copyright, 1918, by D.
Appleton and Company.
[Illustration]
XII.--Story of the Bandbox
_By Robert Louis Stevenson_
UP to the age of sixteen, at a private school and afterward at one of
those great institutions for which England is justly famous, Mr. Harry
Hartley had received the ordinary education of a gentleman. At that
period he manifested a remarkable distaste for study; and his only
surviving parent being both weak and ignorant, he was permitted
thenceforward to spend his time in the attainment of petty and purely
elegant accomplishments. Two years later, he was left an orphan and
almost a beggar. For all active and industrious pursuits, Harry was
unfitted alike by nature and training. He could sing romantic ditties,
and accompany himself with discretion on the piano; he was a graceful
although a timid cavalier; he had a pronounced taste for chess; and
nature had sent him into the world with one of the most engaging
exteriors than can well be fancied.
A fortunate chance and some influence obtained for Harry, at the time of
his bereavement, the position of private secretary to Major-General Sir
Thomas Vandeleur, C. B. Sir Thomas was a man of sixty, loud-spoken,
boisterous, and domineering. For some reason, some service, the nature
of which had been often whispered and repeatedly denied, the Rajah of
Kashgar had presented this officer with the sixth largest known diamond
of the world. The gift transformed General Vandeleur from a poor into a
wealthy man, from an obscure and unpopular soldier into one of the lions
of London society; the possessor of the Rajah's Diamond was welcome in
the most exclusive circles; and he had found a lady, young, beautiful,
and well-born, who was willing to call the diamond hers even at the
price of marriage with Sir Thomas Vandeleur. It was commonly said at the
time that, as like draws to like, one jewel had attracted another;
certainly Lady Vandeleur was not only a gem of the finest water in her
own person, but she showed herself to the world in a very costly
setting; and she was considered by many respectable authorities as one
among the three or four best-dressed women in England.
Harry's duty as secretary was not particularly onerous; but he had a
dislike for all prolonged work; it gave him pain to ink his fingers;
and the charms of Lady Vandeleur and her toilets drew him often from the
library to the boudoir. He had the prettiest ways among women, could
talk fashions with enjoyment, and was never more happy than when
criticizing a shade of ribbon, or running on an errand to the
milliner's. In short, Sir Thomas' correspondence fell into pitiful
arrears, and my lady had another lady's maid.
At last the general, who was one of the least patient of military
commanders, arose from his place in a violent excess of passion, and
indicated to his secretary that he had no further use for his services,
with one of those explanatory gestures which are most rarely employed
between gentlemen. The door being unfortunately open, Mr. Hartley fell
down-stairs head foremost.
He arose somewhat hurt and very deeply aggrieved. The life in the
general's house precisely suited him; he moved, on a more or less
doubtful footing, in very genteel company, he did little, he ate of the
best, and he had a lukewarm satisfaction in the presence of Lady
Vandeleur.
Immediately after he had been outraged by the military foot, he hurried
to the boudoir and recounted his sorrows.
"You know very well, my dear Harry," replied Lady Vandeleur, for she
called him by name like a child or a domestic servant, "that you never
by any chance do what the general tells you. I shall be sorry to lose
you, but since you cannot stay longer in a house where you have been
insulted, I shall wish you good-bye, and I promise you to make the
general smart for his behavior."
"My lady," said he, "what is an insult? I should think little indeed of
any one who could not forgive them by the score. But to leave one's
friends; to tear up the bonds of affection----"
He was unable to continue, for his emotion choked him, and he began to
weep.
Lady Vandeleur looked at him with a curious expression.
"This little fool," she thought, "why should he not become my servant
instead of the general's? He is good-natured, obliging, and understands
dress; and besides, it will keep him out of mischief."
That night she talked over the general, who was already somewhat ashamed
of his vivacity; and Harry was transferred to the feminine department,
where his life was little short of heavenly. He was always dressed with
uncommon nicety, wore delicate flowers in his button-hole, and could
entertain a visitor with tact and pleasantry.
One fine morning he came into the drawing-room and began to arrange some
music on the top of the piano. Lady Vandeleur, at the other end of the
apartment, was speaking somewhat eagerly with her brother, Charlie
Pendragon, an elderly young man, much broken with dissipation and very
lame of one foot. The private secretary, to whose entrance they paid no
regard, could not avoid overhearing a part of their conversation.
"To-day or never," said the lady. "Once and for all, it shall be done
to-day."
"To-day, it must be," replied the brother, with a sigh. "But it is a
false step, a ruinous step, Clara; and we shall live to repent it
dismally."
Lady Vandeleur looked her brother steadily and somewhat strangely in the
face.
"You forget," she said; "the man must die at last."
"Upon my word, Clara," said Pendragon, "I believe you are the most
heartless rascal in England."
"You men," she returned, "are so coarsely built, that you can never
appreciate a shade of meaning. You are yourselves rapacious, violent,
immodest, careless of distinction; and yet the least thought for the
future shocks you in a woman. I have no patience with such stuff. You
would despise in a common banker the imbecility that you expect to find
in us."
"You are very likely right," replied her brother; "you were always
cleverer than I. And, anyway, you know my motto: the family before all."
"Yes, Charlie," she returned, taking his hand in hers. "I know your
motto better than you know it yourself. And 'Clara before the family!'
Is not that the second part of it? Indeed, you are the best of
brothers, and I love you dearly."
Mr. Pendragon got up, looking a little confused by these family
endearments.
"I had better not be seen," said he. "I understand my part to a miracle,
and I'll keep an eye on the Tame Cat."
"Do," she replied. "He is an abject creature, and might ruin all."
She kissed the tips of her fingers to him daintily; and the brother
withdrew by the boudoir and the back-stair.
"Harry," said Lady Vandeleur, turning toward the secretary as soon as
they were alone. "I have a commission for you this morning. But you
shall take a cab; I cannot have my secretary freckled."
She spoke the last words with emphasis and a look of half-motherly pride
that caused great contentment to poor Harry; and he professed himself
charmed to find an opportunity of serving her.
"It is another of our great secrets," she went on archly, "and no one
must know of it but my secretary and me. Sir Thomas would make the
saddest disturbance; and if you only knew how weary I am with these
scenes! Oh, Harry, Harry, can you explain to me what makes you men so
violent and unjust? But, indeed, I know you cannot; you are the only man
in the world who knows nothing of these shameful passions; you are so
good, Harry, and so kind; you, at least, can be a woman's friend; and
do you know? I think you make the others more ugly by comparison."
"It is you," said Harry, gallantly, "who are so kind to me. You treat me
like----"
"Like a mother," interposed Lady Vandeleur. "I try to be a mother to
you. Or, at least," she corrected herself with a smile, "almost a
mother. I am afraid I am too young to be your mother really. Let us say
a friend--a dear friend."
"But all this is beside our purpose," she resumed. "You will find a
bandbox in the left-hand side of the oak wardrobe; it is underneath the
pink slip that I wore on Wednesday with my Mechlin. You will take it
immediately to this address," and she gave him a slip of paper, "but do
not, on any account, let it out of your hands until you have received a
receipt written by myself. Do you understand? Answer, if you
please--answer! This is extremely important, and I must ask you to pay
some attention."
Harry pacified her by repeating her instructions perfectly; and she was
just going to tell him more when General Vandeleur flung into the
apartment, scarlet with anger, and holding a long and elaborate
milliner's bill in his hand.
"Will you look at this, madam?" cried he. "Will you have the goodness to
look at this document? I know well enough you married me for my money,
and I hope I can make as great allowance as any other man in the
service; but, as sure as God made me, I mean to put a period to this
disreputable prodigality."
"Mr. Hartley," said Lady Vandeleur, "I think you understand what you
have to do. May I ask you to see to it at once?"
"Stop," said the general, addressing Harry, "one word before you go."
And then, turning again to Lady Vandeleur, "What is this precious
fellow's errand?" he demanded. "I trust him no further than I do
yourself, let me tell you. If he had as much as the rudiments of
honesty, he would scorn to stay in this house; and what he does for his
wages is a mystery to all the world. What is his errand, madam? and why
are you hurrying him away?"
"I supposed you had something to say to me in private," replied the
lady.
"You spoke about an errand," insisted the general. "Do not attempt to
deceive me in my present state of temper. You certainly spoke about an
errand."
"If you insist on making your servants privy to our humiliating
dissensions," replied Lady Vandeleur, "perhaps I had better ask Mr.
Hartley to sit down. No?" she continued; "then you may go, Mr. Hartley.
I trust you may remember all that you have heard in this room; it may be
useful to you."
Harry at once made his escape from the drawing-room; and as he ran
upstairs he could hear the general's voice upraised in declamation, and
the thin tones of Lady Vandeleur planting icy repartees at every
opening. How cordially he admired the wife! How skillfully she could
evade an awkward question! with what secure effrontery she repeated her
instructions under the very guns of the enemy! and on the other hand,
how he detested the husband!
There had been nothing unfamiliar in the morning's events, for he was
continually in the habit of serving Lady Vandeleur on secret missions,
principally connected with millinery. There was a skeleton in the house,
as he well knew. The bottomless extravagance and the unknown liabilities
of the wife had long since swallowed her own fortune, and threatened day
by day to ingulf that of the husband. Once or twice in every year
exposure and ruin seemed imminent, and Harry kept trotting round to all
sorts of furnishers' shops, telling small fibs, and paying small
advances on the gross amount, until another term was tided over, and the
lady and her faithful secretary breathed again. For Harry, in a double
capacity, was heart and soul upon that side of the war; not only did he
adore Lady Vandeleur and fear and dislike her husband, but he naturally
sympathized with the love of finery, and his own single extravagance was
at the tailor's.
He found the bandbox where it had been described, arranged his toilet
with care, and left the house. The sun shone brightly; the distance he
had to travel was considerable, and he remembered with dismay that the
general's sudden interruption had prevented Lady Vandeleur from giving
him money for a cab. On this sultry day there was every chance that his
complexion would suffer severely; and to walk through so much of London
with a bandbox on his arm was a humiliation almost insupportable to a
youth of his character. He paused, and took counsel with himself. The
Vandeleurs lived in Eaton Place; his destination was near Notting Hill;
plainly, he might cross the Park by keeping well in the open and
avoiding populous alleys; and he thanked his stars when he reflected
that it was still comparatively early in the day.
Anxious to be rid of his incubus, he walked somewhat faster than his
ordinary, and he was already some way through Kensington Gardens when,
in a solitary spot among trees, he found himself confronted by the
general.
"I beg your pardon, Sir Thomas," observed Harry, politely falling on one
side; for the other stood directly in his path.
"Where are you going, sir?" asked the general.
"I am taking a little walk among the trees," replied the lad.
The general struck the bandbox with his cane.
"With that thing?" he cried; "you lie, sir, and you know you lie!"
"Indeed, Sir Thomas," returned Harry, "I am not accustomed to be
questioned in so high a key."
"You do not understand your position," said the general. "You are my
servant, and a servant of whom I have conceived the most serious
suspicions. How do I know but that your box is full of teaspoons?"
"It contains a silk hat belonging to a friend," said Harry.
"Very well," replied General Vandeleur. "Then I want to see your
friend's silk hat. I have," he added, grimly, "a singular curiosity for
hats; and I believe you know me to be somewhat positive."
"I beg your pardon, Sir Thomas, I am exceedingly grieved," Harry
apologized; "but indeed this is a private affair."
The general caught him roughly by the shoulder with one hand, while he
raised his cane in the most menacing manner with the other. Harry gave
himself up for lost; but at the same moment Heaven vouchsafed him an
unexpected defender in the person of Charlie Pendragon, who now strode
forward from behind the trees.
"Come, come, general, hold your hand," said he, "this is neither
courteous nor manly."
"Aha!" cried the general, wheeling round upon his new antagonist, "Mr.
Pendragon! And do you suppose, Mr. Pendragon, that because I have had
the misfortune to marry your sister, I shall suffer myself to be dogged
and thwarted by a discredited and bankrupt libertine like you? My
acquaintance with Lady Vandeleur, sir, has taken away all my appetite
for the other members of her family."
"And do you fancy, General Vandeleur," retorted Charlie, "that because
my sister has had the misfortune to marry you, she there and then
forfeited her rights and privileges as a lady? I own, sir, that by that
action she did as much as anybody could to derogate from her position;
but to me she is still a Pendragon. I make it my business to protect her
from ungentlemanly outrage, and if you were ten times her husband I
would not permit her liberty to be restrained, nor her private messenger
to be violently arrested."
"How is that, Mr. Hartley?" interrogated the general. "Mr. Pendragon is
of my opinion, it appears. He, too, suspects that Lady Vandeleur has
something to do with your friend's silk hat."
Charlie saw that he had committed an unpardonable blunder, which he
hastened to repair.
"How, sir?" he cried; "I suspect, do you say? I suspect nothing. Only
where I find strength abused and a man brutalizing his inferiors, I take
the liberty to interfere."
As he said these words he made a sign to Harry, which the latter was too
dull or too much troubled to understand.
"In what way am I to construe your attitude, sir?" demanded Vandeleur.
"Why, sir, as you please," returned Pendragon.
The general once more raised his cane, and made a cut for Charlie's
head; but the latter, lame foot and all, evaded the blow with his
umbrella, ran in, and immediately closed with his formidable adversary.
"Run, Harry, run!" he cried; "run, you dolt!"
Harry stood petrified for a moment, watching the two men sway together
in this fierce embrace; then he turned and took to his heels. When he
cast a glance over his shoulder he saw the general prostrate under
Charlie's knee, but still making desperate efforts to reverse the
situation; and the gardens seemed to have filled with people, who were
running from all directions toward the scene of the fight. This
spectacle lent the secretary wings, and he did not relax his pace until
he had gained the Bayswater Road, and plunged at random into an
unfrequented by-street.
To see two gentlemen of his acquaintance thus brutally mauling each
other was deeply shocking to Harry. He desired to forget the sight; he
desired, above all, to put as great a distance as possible between
himself and General Vandeleur; and in his eagerness for this he forgot
everything about his destination, and hurried before him headlong and
trembling. When he remembered that Lady Vandeleur was the wife of one
and sister of the other of these gladiators, his heart was touched with
sympathy for a woman so distressingly misplaced in life. Even his own
situation in the general's house looked hardly so pleasing as usual in
the light of these violent transactions.
He had walked some little distance, busied with these meditations,
before a slight collision with another passenger reminded him of the
bandbox on his arm.
"Heavens!" cried he, "where was my head? and whither have I wandered?"
Thereupon he consulted the envelope which Lady Vandeleur had given him.
The address was there, but without a name. Harry was simply directed to
ask for "the gentleman who accepted a parcel from Lady Vandeleur," and
if he were not at home to await his return. The gentleman, added the
note, should present a receipt in the handwriting of the lady herself.
All this seemed mighty mysterious, and Harry was above all astonished at
the omission of the name and the formality of the receipt. He had
thought little of this last when he heard it dropped in conversation;
but reading it in cold blood, and taking it in connection with the other
strange particulars, he became convinced that he was engaged in perilous
affairs. For half a moment he had a doubt of Lady Vandeleur herself; for
he found these obscure proceedings somewhat unworthy of so high a lady,
and became more critical when her secrets were preserved against
himself. But her empire over his spirit was too complete, he dismissed
his suspicions, and blamed himself roundly for having so much as
entertained them.
In one thing, however, his duty and interest, his generosity and his
terrors, coincided--to get rid of the bandbox with the greatest possible
dispatch.
He accosted the first policeman and courteously inquired his way. It
turned out that he was already not far from his destination, and a walk
of a few minutes brought him to a small house in a lane, freshly
painted, and kept with the most scrupulous attention. The knocker and
bell-pull were highly polished; flowering pot-herbs garnished the sills
of the different windows; and curtains of some rich material concealed
the interior from the eyes of curious passengers. The place had an air
of repose and secrecy; and Harry was so far caught with this spirit that
he knocked with more than usual discretion, and was more than usually
careful to remove all impurity from his boots.
A servant-maid of some personal attractions immediately opened the door,
and seemed to regard the secretary with no unkind eyes.
"This is the parcel from Lady Vandeleur," said Harry.
"I know," replied the maid, with a nod. "But the gentleman is from home.
Will you leave it with me?"
"I cannot," answered Harry. "I am directed not to part with it but upon
a certain condition, and I must ask you, I am afraid, to let me wait."
"Well," said she, "I suppose I may let you wait. I am lonely enough, I
can tell you, and you do not look as though you would eat a girl. But be
sure and do not ask the gentleman's name, for that I am not to tell
you."
"Do you say so?" cried Harry. "Why, how strange! But, indeed, for some
time back I walk among surprises. One question I think I may surely ask
without indiscretion: Is he the master of this house?"
"He is a lodger, and not eight days old at that," returned the maid.
"And now a question for a question: Do you know Lady Vandeleur?"
"I am her private secretary," replied Harry, with a glow of modest
pride.
"She is pretty, is she not?" pursued the servant.
"Oh, beautiful!" cried Harry; "wonderfully lovely, and not less good and
kind!"
"You look kind enough yourself," she retorted; "and I wager you are
worth a dozen Lady Vandeleurs."
Harry was properly scandalized.
"I?" he cried. "I am only a secretary!"
"Do you mean that for me?" said the girl. "Because I am only a
housemaid, if you please." And then, relenting at the sight of Harry's
obvious confusion, "I know you mean nothing of the sort," she added;
"and I like your looks; but I think nothing of your Lady Vandeleur. Oh,
these mistresses!" she cried. "To send out a real gentleman like
you--with a bandbox--in broad day!"
During this talk they had remained in their original positions--she on
the doorstep, he on the sidewalk, bareheaded for the sake of coolness,
and with the bandbox on his arm. But upon this last speech Harry, who
was unable to support such point-blank compliments to his appearance,
nor the encouraging look with which they were accompanied, began to
change his attitude, and glance from left to right in perturbation. In
so doing he turned his face toward the lower end of the lane, and there,
to his indescribable dismay, his eyes encountered those of General
Vandeleur. The general, in a prodigious fluster of heat, hurry and
indignation, had been scouring the streets in chase of his
brother-in-law; but so soon as he caught a glimpse of the delinquent
secretary his purpose changed, his anger flowed into a new channel, and
he turned on his heel and came tearing up the lane with truculent
gestures and vociferations.
Harry made but one bolt of it into the house, driving the maid before
him; and the door was slammed in his pursuer's countenance.
"Is there a bar? Will it lock?" asked Harry, while a salvo on the
knocker made the house echo from wall to wall.
"Why, what is wrong with you?" asked the maid. "Is it this old
gentleman?"
"If he gets hold of me," whispered Harry, "I am as good as dead. He has
been pursuing me all day, carries a sword-stick, and is an Indian
military officer."
"These are fine manners," cried the maid. "And what, if you please, may
be his name?"
"It is the general, my master," answered Harry. "He is after this
bandbox."
"Did not I tell you?" cried the maid in triumph. "I told you I thought
worse than nothing of your Lady Vandeleur; and if you had an eye in your
head you might see what she is for yourself. An ungrateful minx, I will
be bound for that!"
The general renewed his attack upon the knocker, and his passion growing
with delay, began to kick and beat upon the panels of the door.
"It is lucky," observed the girl, "that I am alone in the house; your
general may hammer until he is weary, and there is none to open for him.
Follow me!"
So saying she led Harry into the kitchen, where she made him sit down,
and stood by him herself in an affectionate attitude, with a hand upon
his shoulder. The din at the door, so far from abating, continued to
increase in volume, and at each blow the unhappy secretary was shaken to
the heart.
"What is your name?" asked the girl.