dog came leaping and barking about in a very alarming way, she hit him
as hard as she could on his head. The wonder is she did not kill him on
the spot, and, as it was, the blow turned him perfectly giddy and silly
for a time, and he ran round and round in a dazed sort of way--do you
think you could lower that candle-shade just a little? Thanks!' she
broke off suddenly, as I obeyed. 'Well, she was going to strike again,
when her mistress rushed out, just in time to stop her. For, you see,
she had been watching at the window, and although the poor beast was
miserably thin, and rough, and neglected-looking, she knew at once that
it must be Pepper, and that he was not in the least mad or dangerous,
but only trying his best to make his peace with the baby. Very likely
his dignity or his conscience or something wouldn't let him come back
quite at once, you know; and perhaps he thought he had better get the
baby on his side first. And then all at once, his mistress--I heard all
this through her, of course--his mistress suddenly remembered how
devoted Pepper had been to her, and how fond she had once been of him,
and when she saw him standing, stupid and shivering, there, her heart
softened to him, and she went to make it up with him, and tell him that
he was forgiven and should come back and be her dog again, just as in
the old days!----'
Here she broke off for a moment. I did not venture to look at her, but I
thought her voice trembled a little when she spoke again. 'I don't quite
know _why_ I tell you all this. There was a time when I never could bear
the end of it myself,' she said; 'but I have begun, and I will finish
now. Well, Pepper's mistress went towards him, and called him;
but--whether he was still too dizzy to quite understand who she was, or
whether his pride came uppermost again, poor dear! I don't know--but he
gave her just one look (she says she will never forget it--never; it
went straight to her heart), and then he walked very slowly and
deliberately away.
'She couldn't bear it; she followed; she felt she simply _must_ make
him understand how very, very sorry she was for him; but the moment he
heard her he began to run faster and faster, until he was out of reach
and out of sight, and she had to come back. I know she was crying
bitterly by that time.'
'And he never came back again?' I asked, after a silence.
'Never again!' she said softly; 'that was the very last they ever saw or
heard of him. And--and I've always loved every dog since for Pepper's
sake!'
'I'm almost glad he did decline to come back,' I declared; 'it served
his mistress right--she didn't deserve anything else!'
'Ah, I didn't want you to say that!' she protested; 'she never meant to
be so unkind--it was all for the baby's sake!'
I was distinctly astonished, for all her sympathy in telling the story
had seemed to lie in the other direction.
'You don't mean to say,' I cried involuntarily, 'that you can find any
excuses for her? I did not expect _you_ would take the baby's part!'
'But I did,' she confessed, with lowered eyes--'I _did_ take the baby's
part--it was all my doing that Pepper was sent away--I have been sorry
enough for it since!'
It was her own story she had been telling at second-hand after all--and
she was not Miss So-and-so! I had entirely forgotten the existence of
any other members of the party but our two selves, but at the moment of
this discovery--which was doubly painful--I was recalled by a general
rustle to the fact that we were at a dinner-party, and that our hostess
had just given the signal.
As I rose and drew back my chair to allow my neighbour to pass, she
raised her eyes for a moment and said almost meekly:
'I _was_ the baby, you see!'
_MARJORY_
INTRODUCTION
I have thought myself justified in printing the following narrative,
found among the papers of my dead friend, Douglas Cameron, who left me
discretion to deal with them as I saw fit. It was written indeed, as its
opening words imply, rather for his own solace and relief than with the
expectation that it would be read by any other. But, painful and
intimate as it is in parts, I cannot think that any harm will be done by
printing it now, with some necessary alterations in the names of the
characters chiefly concerned.
Before, however, leaving the story to speak for itself, I should like to
state, in justice to my friend, that during the whole of my acquaintance
with him, which began in our college days, I never saw anything to
indicate the morbid timidity and weakness of character that seem to have
marked him as a boy. Reserved he undoubtedly was, with a taste for
solitude that made him shrink from the society of all but a small
circle, and with a sensitive and shy nature which prevented him from
doing himself complete justice; but he was very capable of holding his
own on occasion, and in his disposition, as I knew it, there was no want
of moral courage, nor any trace of effeminacy.
How far he may have unconsciously exaggerated such failings in the
revelation of his earlier self, or what the influence of such an
experience as he relates may have done to strengthen the moral fibre,
are points on which I can express no opinion, any more than I can pledge
myself to the credibility of the supernatural element of his story.
It may be that only in the boy's overwrought imagination, the innocent
Child-spirit came back to complete the work of love and pity she had
begun in life; but I know that he himself believed otherwise, and,
truly, if those who leave us are permitted to return at all, it must be
on some such errand as Marjory's.
Douglas Cameron's life was short, and in it, so far as I am aware, he
met no one who at all replaced his lost ideal. Of this I cannot be
absolutely certain, for he was a reticent man in such matters; but I
think, had it been so, I should have known of it, for we were very close
friends. One would hardly expect, perhaps, that an ordinary man would
remain faithful all his days to the far-off memory of a child-love; but
then Cameron was not quite as other men, nor were his days long in the
land.
And if this ideal of his was never dimmed for him by some grosser, and
less spiritual, passion, who shall say that he may not have been a
better and even a happier man in consequence.
* * * * *
It is not without an effort that I have resolved to break, in the course
of this narrative, the reserve maintained for nearly twenty years. But
the chief reason for silence is removed now that all those are gone who
might have been pained or harmed by what I have to tell, and, though I
shrink still from reviving certain memories that are fraught with pain,
there are others associated therewith which will surely bring
consolation and relief.
I must have been about eleven at the time I am speaking of, and the
change which--for good or ill--comes over most boys' lives had not yet
threatened mine. I had not left home for school, nor did it seem at all
probable then that I should ever do so.
When I read (I was a great reader) of Dotheboys Hall and Salem House--a
combination of which establishments formed my notion of school-life--it
was with no more personal interest than a cripple might feel in perusing
the notice of an impending conscription; for from the battles of
school-life I was fortunately exempted.
I was the only son of a widow, and we led a secluded life in a London
suburb. My mother took charge of my education herself, and, as far as
mere acquirements went, I was certainly not behind other boys of my
age. I owe too much to that loving and careful training, Heaven knows,
to think of casting any reflection upon it here, but my surroundings
were such as almost necessarily to exclude all bracing and hardening
influences.
My mother had few friends; we were content with our own companionship,
and of boys I knew and cared to know nothing; in fact, I regarded a
strange boy with much the same unreasoning aversion as many excellent
women feel for the most ordinary cow.
I was happy to think that I should never be called upon to associate
with them; by-and-by, when I outgrew my mother's teaching, I was to have
a tutor, perhaps even go to college in time, and when I became a man I
was to be a curate and live with my mother in a clematis-covered cottage
in some pleasant village.
She would often dwell on this future with a tender prospective pride;
she spoke of it on the very day that saw it shattered for ever.
For there came a morning when, on going to her with my lessons for the
day, I was gladdened with an unexpected holiday. I little knew
then--though I was to learn it soon enough--that my lessons had been all
holidays, or that on that day they were to end for ever.
My mother had had one or two previous attacks of an illness which seemed
to prostrate her for a short period, and as she soon regained her
ordinary health, I did not think they could be of a serious nature.
So I devoted my holiday cheerfully enough to the illumination of a
text, on the gaudy colouring of which I found myself gazing two days
later with a dull wonder, as at the work of a strange hand in a long
dead past, for the boy who had painted that was a happy boy who had a
mother, and for two endless days I had been alone.
Those days, and many that followed, come back to me now but vaguely. I
passed them mostly in a state of blank bewilderment caused by the double
sense of sameness and strangeness in everything around me; then there
were times when this gave way to a passionate anguish which refused all
attempts at comfort, and times even--but very, very seldom--when I
almost forgot what had happened to me.
Our one servant remained in the house with me, and a friend and
neighbour of my mother's was constant in her endeavours to relieve my
loneliness; but I was impatient of them, I fear, and chiefly anxious to
be left alone to indulge my melancholy unchecked.
I remember how, as autumn began, and leaf after leaf fluttered down from
the trees in our little garden, I watched them fall with a heavier
heart, for they had known my mother, and now they, too, were deserting
me.
This morbid state of mind had lasted quite long enough when my uncle,
who was my guardian, saw fit to put a summary end to it by sending me
to school forthwith; he would have softened the change for me by taking
me to his own home first, but there was illness of some sort there, and
this was out of the question.
I was neither sorry nor glad when I heard of it, for all places were the
same to me just then; only, as the time drew near, I began to regard the
future with a growing dread.
The school was at some distance from London, and my uncle took me down
by rail; but the only fact I remember connected with the journey is that
there was a boy in the carriage with us who cracked walnuts all the way,
and I wondered if he was going to school too, and concluded that he was
not, or he would hardly eat quite so many walnuts.
Later we were passing through some wrought-iron gates, and down an
avenue of young chestnuts, which made a gorgeous autumn canopy of
scarlet, amber, and orange, up to a fine old red-brick house, with a
high-pitched roof, and a cupola in which a big bell hung, tinted a warm
gold by the afternoon sun.
This was my school, and it did not look so very-terrible after all.
There was a big bow-window by the pillared portico, and, looking timidly
in, I saw a girl of about my own age sitting there, absorbed in the book
she was reading, her long brown hair drooping over her cheek and the
hand on which it rested.
She glanced up at the sound of the door-bell, and I felt her eyes
examining me seriously and critically, and then I forgot everything but
the fact that I was about to be introduced to my future schoolmaster,
the Rev. Basil Dering.
This was less of an ordeal than I had expected; he had a strong,
massively-cut, leonine face, free and abundant white hair, streaked with
dark grey, but there was a kind light in his eyes as I looked up at
them, and the firm mouth could smile, I found, pleasantly enough.
Mrs. Dering seemed younger, and was handsome, with a certain stateliness
and decision of manner which put me less at my ease, and I was relieved
to be told I might say good-bye to my uncle, and wander about the
grounds as I liked.
I was not surprised to pass through an empty schoolroom, and to descend
by some steep stairs to a deserted playground, for we had been already
told that the Michaelmas holidays were not over, and that the boys would
not return for some days to come.
It gave me a kind of satisfaction to think of my resemblance, just then,
to my favourite David Copperfield, but I was to have a far pleasanter
companion than poor lugubrious, flute-tootling Mr. Mell, for as I paced
the damp paths paved with a mosaic of russet and yellow leaves, I heard
light footsteps behind me, and turned to find myself face to face with
the girl I had seen at the window.
She stood there breathless for an instant, for she had hurried to
overtake me, and against a background of crimson creepers I saw the
brilliant face, with its soft but fearless brown eyes, small straight
nose, spirited mouth, and crisp wavy golden-brown hair, which I see now
almost as distinctly as I write.
'You're the new boy,' she said at length. 'I've come out to make you
feel more at home. I suppose you don't feel _quite_ at home just yet?'
'Not quite, thank you,' I said, lifting my cap with ceremony, for I had
been taught to be particular about my manners; 'I have never been to
school before, you see, Miss Dering.'
I think she was a little puzzled by so much politeness. 'I know,' she
said softly; 'mother told me about it, and I'm very sorry. And I'm
called Marjory, generally. Shall you like school, do you think?'
'I might,' said I, 'if--if it wasn't for the boys!'
'Boys aren't bad,' she said; 'ours are rather nice, I think. But perhaps
you don't know many?'
'I know one,' I replied.
'How old is _he_?' she wished to know.
'Not very old--about three, I think,' I said. I had never wished till
then that my only male acquaintance had been of less tender years, but I
felt now that he was rather small, and saw that Marjory was of the same
opinion.
'Why, he's only a baby!' she said; 'I thought you meant a _real_ boy.
And is that all the boys you know? Are you fond of games?'
'Some games--very,' said I.
'What's your favourite game?' she demanded.
'Bezique,' I answered, 'or draughts.'
'I meant _out_door games; draughts are indoor games--_is_ indoor games,
I mean--no, _are_ an indoor game--and _that_ doesn't sound grammar! But
haven't you ever played cricket? Not ever, really? I like it dreadfully
myself, only I'm not allowed to play with the boys, and I'm sure I can
bat well enough for the second eleven--Cartwright said I could last
term--and I can bowl round-hand, and it's all no use, just because I was
born a girl! Wouldn't you like a game at something? They haven't taken
in the croquet hoops yet; shall we play at that?'
But again I had to confess my ignorance of what was then the popular
garden game.
'What do you generally do to amuse yourself, then?' she inquired.
'I read, generally, or paint texts or outlines. Sometimes'--(I thought
this accomplishment would surely appeal to her)--'sometimes I do
woolwork!'
'I don't think I would tell the boys that,' she advised rather gravely;
she evidently considered me a very desperate case. 'It's such a pity,
your not knowing any games. Suppose I taught you croquet, now? It would
be something to go on with, and you'll soon learn if you pay attention
and do exactly what I tell you.'
I submitted myself meekly to her direction, and Marjory enjoyed her
office of instructress for a time, until my extreme slowness wore out
her patience, and she began to make little murmurs of disgust, for which
she invariably apologised. 'That's enough for to-day!' she said at last,
'I'll take you again to-morrow. But you really must try and pick up
games, Cameron, or you'll never be liked. Let me see, I wonder if
there's time to teach you a little football. I think I could do that.'
Before she could make any further arrangements the tea-bell rang, but
when I lay down that night in my strange cold bed, hemmed round by other
beds, which were only less formidable than if they had been occupied, I
did not feel so friendless as I might have done, and dreamed all night
that Marjory was teaching me something I understood to be cricket,
which, however, was more like a bloated kind of backgammon.
The next day Marjory was allowed to go out walking with me, and I came
home feeling that I had known her for quite a long time, while her
manner to me had acquired a tone even more protecting than before, and
she began to betray an anxiety as to my school prospects which filled me
with uneasiness.
'I am so afraid the boys won't like the way you talk,' she said on one
occasion.
'I used to be told I spoke very correctly,' I said, verdantly enough.
'But not like boys talk. You see, Cameron, I ought to know, with such a
lot of them about. I tell you what I could do, though--I could teach you
most of their words--only I must run and ask mother first if I may.
Teaching slang isn't the same as using it on my own account, is it?'
Marjory darted off impulsively to ask leave, to return presently with a
slow step and downcast face. 'I mayn't,' she announced. 'Mother says
"Certainly not," so there's an end of that! Still, I think myself it's a
decided pity.'
And more than once that day she would observe, as if to herself, 'I do
wish they had let him come to school in different collars!'
I knew that these remarks, and others of a similar tendency, were
prompted by her interest in my welfare, and I admired her too heartily
already to be offended by them: still, I cannot say they added to my
peace of mind.
And on the last evening of the holidays she said 'Good-night' to me with
some solemnity. 'Everything will be different after this,' she said; 'I
shan't be able to see nearly so much of you, because I'm not allowed to
be much with the boys. But I shall be looking after you all the time,
Cameron, and seeing how you get on. And oh! I do hope you will try to be
a popular kind of boy!'
* * * * *
I'm afraid I must own that this desire of Marjory's was not realised. I
do not know that I tried to be--and I certainly was not--a popular boy.
The other boys, I now know, were by no means bad specimens of the
English schoolboy, as will be evident when I state that, for a time, my
deep mourning was held by them to give me a claim to their forbearance.
But I had an unfortunate tendency to sudden floods of tears (apparently
for no cause whatever, really from some secret spring of association,
such as I remember was touched when I first found myself learning Latin
from the same primer over which my mother and I had puzzled together),
and these outbursts at first aroused my companions' contempt, and
finally their open ridicule.
I could not conceal my shrinking dislike to their society, which was not
calculated to make them more favourably disposed towards me; while my
tastes, my expressions, my ways of looking at things, were all at total
variance with their own standards.
The general disapproval might well have shown itself in a harsher manner
than that of merely ignoring my existence--and it says much for the tone
of the school that it did not; unfortunately, I felt their indifference
almost as keenly as I had dreaded their notice.
From my masters I met with more favour, for I had been thoroughly well
grounded, and found, besides, a temporary distraction in my school-work;
but this was hardly likely to render me more beloved by my fellows, and
so it came to pass that every day saw my isolation more complete.
Something, however, made me anxious to hide this from Marjory's eyes,
and whenever she happened to be looking on at us in the school grounds
or the playing fields, I made dismal attempts to appear on terms of
equality with the rest, and would hang about a group with as much
pretence of belonging to it as I thought at all prudent.
If she had had more opportunities of questioning me, she would have
found me out long before; as it was, the only occasion on which we were
near one another was at the weekly drawing lesson, when, although she
drew less and talked more than the Professor quite approved of, she was
obliged to restrict herself to a conversation which did not admit of
confidences.
But this negative neutral-tinted misery was not to last; I was harmless
enough, but then to some natures nothing is so offensive as
inoffensiveness. My isolation was certain to raise me up an enemy in
time, and he came in the person of one Clarence Ormsby.
He was a sturdy, good-looking fellow, about two years older than myself,
good at games, and, though not brilliant in other respects, rather idle
than dull. He was popular in the school, and I believe his general
disposition was by no means bad; but there must have been some hidden
flaw in his nature which might never have disclosed itself for any other
but me.
For me he had displayed, almost from the first, one of those special
antipathies that want but little excuse to ripen into hatred. My
personal appearance--I had the misfortune to be a decidedly plain
boy--happened to be particularly displeasing to him, and, as he had an
unsparing tongue, he used it to cover me with ridicule, until gradually,
finding that I did not retaliate, he indulged in acts of petty
oppression which, though not strictly bullying, were even more harassing
and humiliating.
I suspect now that if I had made ever so slight a stand at the outset, I
should have escaped further molestation, but I was not pugnacious by
nature, and never made the experiment; partly, probably, from a theory
on which I had been reared, that all violence was vulgar, but chiefly
from a tendency, unnatural in one of my age and sex, to find a
sentimental satisfaction in a certain degree of unhappiness.
So that I can neither pity myself nor expect pity from others for woes
which were so essentially my own creation, though they resulted, alas!
in misery that was real enough.
It was inevitable that quick-sighted Marjory should discover the
subjection into which I had fallen, and her final enlightenment was
brought about in this manner. Ormsby and I were together alone, shortly
before morning school, and he came towards me with an exercise of mine
from which he had just been copying his own, for we were in the same
classes, despite the difference in our ages, and he was in the habit of
profiting thus by my industry.
'Thanks, Cameron,' he said, with a sweetness which I distrusted, for he
was not as a rule so lavish in his gratitude. 'I've copied out that
exercise of yours, but it's written so beastly badly that you'd better
do it over again.'
With which he deliberately tore the page he had been copying from to
scraps, which he threw in my face, and strolled out down to the
playground.
I was preparing submissively to do the exercise over again as well as I
could in the short time that was left, when I was startled by a low cry
of indignation, and, looking round, saw Marjory standing in the doorway,
and knew by her face that she had seen all.
'Has Ormsby done that to you before?' she inquired.
'Once or twice he has,' said I.
'And you let him!' she cried. 'Oh, Cameron!'
'What can I do?' I said.
'I know what _I_ would do,' she replied. 'I would slap his face, or
pinch him. I wouldn't put up with it!'
'Boys don't slap one another, or pinch,' I said, not displeased to find
a weak place in her knowledge of us.
'Well, they do _something_!' she said; 'a real boy would. But I don't
think you are a real boy, Cameron. _I'll_ show you what to do. Where's
the exercise that--that _pig_ copied? Ah! I see it. And now--look!'
(Here she tore his page as he had torn mine.)
'Now for an envelope!' and from the Doctor's own desk she took an
envelope, in which she placed the fragments, and wrote on the outside in
her round, childish hand: 'With Marjory's compliments, for being a
bully.'
'He won't do that again,' she said gleefully.
'He'll do worse,' I said in dismay; 'I shall have to pay for it.
Marjory, why didn't you leave things alone? I didn't complain--you know
I didn't.'
She turned upon me, as well she might, in supreme disdain. 'Oh! what a
coward you are! I wouldn't believe all Cartwright told me about you when
I asked--but I see it's all true. Why don't you stick up for yourself?'
I muttered something or other.
'But you _ought_ to. You'll never get on unless,' said Marjory, very
decidedly. 'Now, promise me you will, next time.'
I sat there silent. I was disgusted with myself, and meanly angry with
her for having rendered me so.
'Then, listen,' she said impressively. 'I promised I would look after
you, and I did mean to, but it's no use if you won't help yourself. So,
unless you say you won't go on being a coward any more, I shall have to
leave you to your own way, and not take the least interest in you ever
again.'
'Then, you may,' I said stolidly; 'I don't care.' I wondered, even while
I spoke the words, what could be impelling me to treat spirited,
warm-hearted Marjory like that, and I hate myself still at the
recollection.
'Good-bye, then,' she said very quietly; 'I'm sorry, Cameron.' And she
went out without another word.
When Ormsby came in, I watched him apprehensively as he read the
envelope upon his desk and saw its contents. He said nothing, however,
though he shot a malignant glance in my direction; but the lesson was
not lost upon him, for from that time he avoided all open ill-treatment
of me, and even went so far as to assume a friendliness which might have
reassured me had I not instinctively felt that it merely masked the old
dislike.