Chapter XI: The Little Lady

And so another element entered into the tiger-cubs' education, and one that, for so small a creature, exercised a mighty influence on them, both then and thereafter.

She was the Joy of Charles Eager's heart and the light of his eyes. Other sisters and brothers there had been, but all were gone save this little fairy, and they two were alone in the world. While he wrought in the dark corners of the great city he had boarded her with some maiden aunts in the suburbs, and the weekly sight of her, growing like a flower, had helped to keep his heart fresh and sweet. Not the least of the joys of his translation to this wide new sphere was the fact that he could have her always with him.

Mrs. Jex wept with joy at sight of her, vowed she was the very image of her own little Sally, who died when she was eight, and proceeded to squander on her the pent-up affections of thirty childless years.

And the Little Lady, as Mrs. Jex styled her, lorded it over them all, then and thereafter, and was a factor of no small consequence in all their lives.

Over the slowly regenerating tiger-cubs she exercised a peculiarly softening and elevating influence. It was exactly what they needed, and all unconsciously it wrought upon the simple savageries of their boy-natures as powerfully as did the Rev. Charles's more direct and strenuous endeavours.

Both boys, in moments of excitement, which were many in the course of each day, had a habit of expression, picked up from Sir Denzil and Mr. Kennet, which was not a little startling on their juvenile lips. Eager promptly suppressed these whenever they slipped out. He knew well enough that they conveyed no special meaning to the boys beyond an idea of extra forcefulness, but, besides being unseemly, they grated horribly on his sensitive ear.

As for the Little Lady, Master Jim Carron did not soon forget the effect produced on her by one of his unconscious expletives.

When Dan Fell of Wynsloe got to the end of his bottle of Hollands gin sooner than he expected one dark night at the fishing, and hurled it overboard with a curse, his only feeling was one of disgust at the shortcomings of a friend in time of need. If any one had told him that he was thereby assisting in the education of little Jim Carron of Carne he would have cursed more volubly still, under the impression that he was being made game of, which was a thing he could not stand. The bottle floated ashore, tried conclusions with a log of Norway pine thrown up by the last equinoctials, distributed itself in razor-like spicules about the soft sand, and lay in wait for unwary feet.

Jim, racing home one day from the bathing alongside the Little Lady, and dazzled somewhat, perhaps, by the gleam of the little crimson robe and the damp little mane of flowing hair, set incautious foot on one of the razor spicules, jerked out an energetic and utterly unconscious "Damn!" and bit the sand.

The Little Lady heard the word, but missed the cause.

"Oh!" cried she, in a shocked voice, and sped away to her own apartment, and began to dress with trembling sodden pink fingers in extreme haste, as though clothing might possibly afford a certain amount of protection against the ill effects of flying curses.

By the time she had got on her tiny pink petticoat, a peep round the corner showed her her brother and Jack kneeling by the fallen utterer of oaths and curses, and she began to fear something had happened.

She had little doubt that punishment had promptly overtaken the sinner. But she liked the sinner in spite of his sin, and she stole back to see what was the matter. That it was something serious was evident by Charles's knitted brows as he bent over the foot which Jim held tightly between his hands. His lips were pinched very close, and his brown face was mottled with putty colour, and the sand below was red. The indurated little pad, hard as leather almost with much running on the sands--for the boys scoffed at shoes--was badly sliced and bleeding freely, but the worst of it was that the treacherous spicule had broken off short and stopped inside and they had no means of getting it out.

"Rags, Gracie," said Eager, at sight of the tearful face and clasped hands and pink petticoat, and she turned and sped, over sands that rocked like waves beneath her feet, to her dressing-room, and back with an armful of garments and a handkerchief the size of his hand.

He folded the handkerchief into a square pad, and ripped something white into strips and bound the foot tightly, issuing his orders as he did so.

"Jack, get into your things and run for Dr. Yool, and tell him to go to the house. Tell him there's glass inside that must come out. Gracie, put on your frock and sit here with Jim. I'll get some things on, and then I'll carry him home!"

And the Little Lady struggled mistily into her things behind Jim's back, and then sat down alongside him without speaking.

"Doesn't hurt a bit," said Jim, through clenched teeth and whitened lips.

The Little Lady sniffed and looked at the distant sea.

"Tell you it doesn't hurt," said Jim again.

The Little Lady made no response.

And presently--"Whew!" said Jim, with a frightful twist of the face, trying by instinct the other tack, "ah!--o-o-oh!"--but all to no purpose. The Little Lady's soft heart might be wrung, but at present she could not bring herself to speak to this dreadful sinner.

"Now," said Eager, running up. "Stand up, Jim. Put your arms round my neck. Now your feet up, so, and off we go. I must get old Bent to make sandals for you youngsters. We can't have this kind of thing, you know. It'll be ten days before you can use that foot, old man."

"Damn!"

"Jim!"

And the Little Lady fell solemnly into the rear.

She would not speak to him for two whole days, though she did not mind sitting within sight of him in the side of a sand-hill, and she silently allowed him to instruct her in the art of making sand waterfalls. But the current of her usual merry chatter was frozen at the fount, and the unconscious Jim could make nothing of it.

On the third day, tiring of an abstinence that was quite as irksome to herself as to her victim, she broke the ice by informing him of the painful fact that he was doomed to everlasting punishment. She put it very shortly and concisely.

"Jim," she said, "you'll go to hell."

"Um?" chirped Jim cheerfully, glad to hear her voice once more, even at such a price. "An' why?"

"'Cause you swear."

"Ho! Very well! So will HE"--the emphatic use of the third person singular in the boys' vernacular was always understood to stand for Sir Denzil Carron of Carne--"and so will Kennet, and so will Dr. Yool."

"I don't care about any of them," said Grace impartially, "unless, perhaps, Dr. Yool. I do rather like him. But it will be such a pity for you."

The prospect did not seem to trouble him greatly, perhaps because his views on the subject were not nearly so clearly defined as hers.

"Oh, well, I won't if you don't like," he answered cheerfully.

"Thank you," said the Little Lady; and from that time, simply to oblige her, and from no great fear of direr consequences, he really did seem to do his best to avoid the use of any words which might offend her. He even went so far as to assume an oversight of his brother's rhetorical flights, and many a pitched battle they had in consequence.

These encounters were so much a part of their nature that Eager found it impossible to stop them entirely. They had fought continually since ever they could crawl within arm's length of one another. Where other boys might have argued to ill-temper, these two simply closed without wasting a word, and having settled the momentary dispute, _vi et armis_, were as friendly as ever. They both possessed fiery tempers, and had never seen or dreamt of the necessity of controlling them. But on the other hand, they never bore malice, and the cause of dispute, and the blows that settled it, were forgotten the moment the god of battle had awarded the palm. They were very closely matched, and no great bodily harm came of it, though to the spectators it looked fearsome enough.

Bit by bit, utilising and turning to best account their natural powers and proclivities, Eager got hold of them, to the point at all events of inducing their feet into more reasonable upward paths. But as to coming one step nearer to the reading of Sir Denzil's puzzle, he had to acknowledge completest failure.

He studied the boys, from his own intense interest in them, as no other had ever had the opportunity of studying them. And he discussed his observation of them with Sir Denzil time and again. But, so far, there were no ultra indications of disposition in either of them so marked as to offer any reasonable basis for deduction.

For men without a single common view of life, he and Sir Denzil had become quite friendly. A verbal tussle with the old heathen, in which each spoke his mind without reserve, always braced him up, just as the boys' more primitive method of argument seemed to do them good.

The old gentleman always greeted him, over a pinch of snuff, with an expression of regret that he had not yet succeeded in settling the matter out of hand by drowning one of his pupils.

"Well, Mr. Eager," he would say, "no progress yet?"

"Oh, plenty. We're improving every day."

"H'mph If you'd only drown one of them for me----"

"I've a better use for them than that."

"I doubt it. Ill stock on either side, though I say it."

"As the twig is bent----"

"Break one off and I'd thank you. Here is possibly a further complication,"--tapping with his snuff-box a small news-sheet he had been reading when Eager came in.

"What is that, sir?"

"That fool Quixande has got into a mess in Paris--got a sword through his ribs."

"Quixande?" queried Eager, not perceiving the relevancy of the matter.

"He has no issue--none that can inherit, that is. One of those whelps is his only sister's son and so comes in for the title. Which?"

"H'm, yes. It's mighty awkward. I suppose you couldn't make one of them Earl of Quixande and the other Carron of Carne?"

"It would be a solution. But which? Which? Such matters are not settled by guesswork."

"We can only wait and see."

"If Quixande dies we cannot wait--the succession cannot."

"For his own sake we'll hope he'll pull through. He may repent of his sins."

"Quixande?"--with raised brows, and a shake of the head. "You don't know him."

"If I did, I'd try to bring him to his senses."

"Waste of time. With these cubs you may be able to do something, though I doubt it. Quixande's past mending."

"No man is past mending till he's dead. Perhaps not then----"

"Ah!"--with a pinch of snuff and a wave of the hand, "A hopeful creed, but with no more foundation than most others. It would, however, undoubtedly commend itself to Quixande on his death-bed."

"A hopeful creed is better than a hopeless one," said Eager, with emphasis.

"Undoubtedly, if you admit the necessity of such things."

"Thank God, I do."

"Well, well! However--what you are doing for those boys should benefit one of them, though it's thrown away upon the other."

"And if you never solve the puzzle?"

"If one of them dies I accept the other in full. That's the solution."

There were times when all Eager's knocking on the great front door was productive of no result whatever. Then he would go round to the back and interview Mrs. Lee, but never with any satisfaction.

"Ay?" she would say to his statement, straightening up from her work, arms akimbo, and gazing steadily at him with her dark eyes. "Maybe they're out."

But he had never met Sir Denzil out, nor had any of the villagers ever encountered him, and Dr. Yool said brusquely that both the old gentleman and his gentleman were probably lying dead drunk in the upper rooms.

Eager never mentioned these abortive visits to Sir Denzil, and there was never anything in his appearance to justify Dr. Yool's assertions.