Chapter VI: Part II: Children of Last Century (1)

A SMALL EVENT

All service ranks the same with God:
If now, as formerly He trod
Paradise, His presence fills
Our earth, each only as God wills
Can work--God’s puppets, best and worst,
Are we; there is no last nor first.

Say not “a small event”! Why “small”?
Costs it more pain than this, ye call
A “great event” should come to pass,
Than that? Untwine me from the mass
Of deeds which make up life, one deed
Power shall fall short in or exceed!

_Pippa Passes._

Every night the Alfresco Entertainers gave their performance on a little platform set right under the shadow of the great cliff; while in front of them, not a dozen yards away, the rhythmic wash of the sea on a rocky shore seemed a sort of accompaniment to their songs, much softer and more tuneful than that of the poor, jingly, rheumatic piano, which had nothing between it and every sort of weather save an ancient mackintosh cover.

The village itself was but a shelf of shore with one long, straggling, lop-sided street: cottage and shop and great hotel set down haphazard, cheek by jowl, all apparently somewhat inept excrescences on the side of the green-clad cliffs rising behind them straight and steep, a sheer five hundred feet, and just across the narrow line of red road lies the Bristol Channel, with, on a clear day, the Welsh coast plainly in view.

At ten years old, people are generally found more interesting than scenery, and Basil took a great interest in the variety entertainers. They looked so smart and debonair, he thought, in their blue reefers, white duck trousers, and gold-laced yachting caps--though they none of them ever put out to sea. There were five of them altogether, two ladies and three men. Basil did not care so much about the ladies, in spite of the rows of Chinese lanterns that outlined the little stage and shone so pink in the darkness; there seemed no glamor or mystery about them. They were not transcendently beautiful like the gauzy good fairy of pantomime, or the peerless, fearless circus lady in pink and spangles: neither did they possess the mirth-provoking qualities of the dauntless three clad in yatching garb. One always sang sentimentally of “daddies,” or “aunties,” or “chords,” that had somehow gone amissing; and the other--Basil almost disliked that other--sang about things he could in nowise understand, in a hoarse voice, and danced in between the verses, and she didn’t dance at all prettily, for she had thick ankles and high shoulders.

But the three “naval gentlemen,” as Basil respectfully called them, sang funny songs, and acted and knocked each other about in such fashion as caused him almost to roll off his chair in fits of ecstatic mirth. Nearly every fine night after dinner, if nobody wanted him, Harnet, the tall man-servant, would take Basil, and they sat on two chairs in the front row and listened to the entertainment. Sometimes grandfather himself would come, but he generally went to sleep in his chair at home; for when a man goes peel-fishing all day, walking half a dozen miles up the rocky bank of a Devonshire trout stream to his favorite pool, he is disinclined to move again, once he has changed and dined.

The bulk of the audience attending the Alfresco Entertainment sat on the wall separating shore from road, or on the curbstone, but there were always a few chairs placed directly facing the stage, which were charged for at sixpence each. Harnet was far too grand and dignified to sit on either wall or curbstone, and as grandfather always gave Basil a shilling to put in the cardboard plate, Harnet preferred to spend it in this wise.

Now all that company had high-sounding, aristocratic names, except one, who was called, as Basil said, “just simply Mr. Smith.” There was Mr. Montmorency, the manager, whose cheeks were almost as blue as his reefer, and his wife, the lady who danced in the evening, but in the daytime affected flowing tea-gowney garments and large flat hats; there was Mr. Neville Beauchamp, who sang coster songs, to whom the particular accent required for this sort of ditty really seemed no effort, as all his songs were given in similarly pronounced and singular fashion. The lady of the melancholy ballads was called De Vere; she looked thin and young and generally cold, as well she might, for she played everyone’s accompaniments, and never wore a coat, however cold the night. But it was for Mr. Smith that Basil felt most enthusiasm. In the first place, his speaking voice was as the voices of “grandfather’s friends.” In the second, he was, to Basil’s thinking, an admirable actor--changing face and voice, even his very body, to suit the part he happened to be playing; and thirdly, he was funny--funny in a way that Basil understood. Even grandfather laughed at Mr. Smith and applauded him, and when the cardboard plate went round, he sent Basil with the first bit of gold they had had that season.

“Clever chap that,” he said as they strolled homeward under the quiet stars. “Reminds me of someone somehow--looks like a broken-down gentleman; got nice voice, and nice hands--wonder what he’s doing with that lot?”

Basil, however, was quite content to admire Mr. Smith without concerning himself as to his antecedents. He forthwith christened him “the jokey man,” and it rather puzzled him that, except at night, the jokey man was hardly ever with the others, but went wandering about by himself in an aimless and somewhat dismal fashion. Could it be that Mr. Montmorency and Mr. Neville Beauchamp were proud, Basil wondered, because they had such fine names.

Basil’s face was as round as a full moon, and fresh and fair as a monthly rose. Tall and well set up, he was good at games, and keen on every kind of sport. Long days did he spend up the river with his grandfather fishing for trout--he was to have a license for peel next summer, but had to be content with trout during this. He went sea-fishing, too, in charge of a nice fisherman called Oxenham, and caught big pollock outside the bay, and every morning Oxenham rowed Basil and Harnet out from the shore that they might have their morning swim, for the coast is so rocky and dangerous that bathing from the land is no fun at all--though the rocks are very nice to potter about on at low tide, when energetic persons can find prawns in the pools.

One day as Basil was busily engaged in this pursuit, who should come up behind him but the jokey man, looking as melancholy as though there was no sunshine, or blue water, or pleasant pools full of strange sea beasts. Indeed, although he was by profession such an amusing man, he had by no means a cheerful face. Tired lines were written all round his eyes, his shoulders were bent, and his long slim hands hung loose and listless at his sides, yet it was plain that he was by no means old. Moreover, he had changed his smart yachting suit for an old tweed coat and knickerbockers, and a grey billycock dragged over his eyes bereft his appearance of all traces of the jokey man. So that for a minute or two Basil did not know him, even although he sat down on a rock close by and lit his pipe.

Basil was standing bare-legged and knee-deep in water in pursuit of a particularly active and artful shrimp, so that it was only when he at last lifted his head with an emphatic “bother,” that he noticed the stranger; then he beamed, for chance had tossed plump into his lap the opportunity he had long been seeking.

“How do you do?” the little boy inquired politely, taking off his muffin cap with one wet hand while he grasped his net with the other. “I am so pleased to have met you; I’ve wanted to for ever so long.”

“That’s very nice of you,” said the man, and when he smiled he looked quite young. “I am sure the pleasure is mutual.”

“I’ve something most pertickler to ask you,” continued Basil eagerly, scrambling out of the pool to sit on the rock beside him, “and it seemed as if I was never to get a chance. It’s not for myself either, it’s for Viola--you know Viola by sight, I daresay?”

Now it happened that the jokey man, like most other people in that village, knew Viola by sight very well indeed. In fact, Viola, and the General, and Basil, were as speedily pointed out to every stranger who arrived as though they had been bits of scenery. For they came every summer and the village was proud of them.

“Is she your sister?” asked the jokey man, suddenly taking his pipe out of his mouth.

“Yes, and she’s two year older than me, but she doesn’t go to school--I’ve been for a year--she has a ma’mselle. I daresay you’ve seen us with her. It’s been such a bore having her here, but she’s going to-morrow, and then we shall do just what we like, for there will be only Harnet and Polly, and we like them. Grannie had to go off quite suddenly to nurse Aunt Alice, and won’t be back for a week, so there’ll be nobody but grandfather and us; it’ll be simply ripping,” and Basil paused breathless, beaming at the pleasant picture he had conjured up.

The jokey man put his pipe back into his mouth and waited; but it had gone out, so he just laid it on the rocks beside him, saying:

“What was it you wanted to ask me?”

“It’s rather difficult to explain,” Basil began, turning very red and rumpling his hair. “It’s Viola, you know; she wants so dreadfully to come to your entertainment. I’ve told her about it, you know, but grandfather says----” Here Basil paused, and turned even redder than before: “One has to be so particular over one’s girls, you know,” he interpolated apologetically, “and she’s the only girl in our family. Grandfather never had any sisters or any daughters, so he thinks no end of Viola, and father and mother are in India, and he says----”

“That some of the songs are vulgar,” said the jokey man shortly. “So they are; he’s perfectly right.”

The jokey man looked at Basil, and Basil looked at the jokey man for a full minute. Then the little boy said very earnestly:

“Do you think that you could persuade them--those other gentlemen, I mean--to leave out one or two songs one evening? There’s that one about the ‘giddy little girl in the big black hat’ that Mr. Montmorency sings. Grandfather doesn’t like that one, and it’s not very amusing, is it? And Viola _does_ want to come so dreadfully.”

The jokey man made no reply, but stared straight out to sea with a very grave face. Perhaps he was thinking of all those other Violas who listened night after night to the songs the General objected to, and were perhaps, unlike his Viola, not “cared about, kept out of harm, and schemed for, safe in love as with a charm.”

Basil waited politely for some minutes, then, as the jokey man didn’t speak, he continued earnestly:

“You see she can just hear that there is music and singing when the windows are open, and it’s so tantalizing, and you see it would be rude to walk away when we’d heard you, and come back next time you sang, wouldn’t it? It doesn’t matter for boys----”

“I’m not at all sure of that,” said Mr. Smith hastily; “it matters very much for boys, too, I think--especially if they don’t happen to have wise grandfathers with good taste. I’ll see what can be done, and let you know.”

“Oh, thank you so much!” cried Basil; “that is kind of you. Viola will be so pleased; she’s up the village now with Polly, or I’d fetch her to thank you herself.”

Now while Basil was talking he noticed that the jokey man’s coat had got leather on the shoulders, and that the leather looked as worn as the coat, so he rightly deduced that at some time or another his new friend must have been something of a sportsman, and asked:

“D’you fish at all?”

“Not here,” said the jokey man, “but I’ve done some fishing in my time. Have you had good sport?”

Then immediately ensued a long discussion on the relative merits of flies, and Basil gave forth his opinion, an opinion backed up by the experience of numerous natives, that the “Coachman” was the fly for that neighborhood, but that there were occasions, especially early in July, when exceedingly good results might be obtained by using red ants. They told each other fishing stories. Basil confided to the jokey man that he had just got a beautiful new split cane rod from “Hardy Brothers,” promised to show it to him at the earliest possible opportunity, and they speedily became the best of friends. For it is a curious fact that although the actual sport itself is a somewhat taciturn pursuit, there are no more conversational sportsmen in the world than ardent followers of the gentle craft.

Another thing--they are always courteous listeners, and generally full of good stories themselves, yet have the most delicate appreciation of other people’s anecdotes. You can nearly always tell a member of a fishing family by this rare and pleasing trait.

Next morning the jokey man called at the hotel and asked for Basil at the door. He wouldn’t come in, and when Basil, greatly excited, appeared, only waited to say hastily: “If you like to bring your sister to-night, I think I can promise you that it will be all right.” Then fled before Basil could thank him, and was soon pounding up the steep hill that ends abruptly at the hotel door, as though he were training for a mountaineering race.

Basil tore back into their sitting-room to lay the case before his grandfather, who, for once, was lunching in the hotel.

“He promised, you know,” he concluded jubilantly, “so she _can_ come, can’t she?”

Grandfather pulled his moustache and laughed. Then Viola came and laid her fresh soft cheek against his, murmuring pleadingly: “Darling, it would be so lovely,” till he pinched Viola’s cheek and made stipulations about heavy cloaks, and the children knew the day was won.

And the end of it all was that, at half-past eight that evening, grandfather, Basil and Viola were seated on three chairs in the very middle of the road that ran past the Alfresco Entertainers’ stage; but as the road ends abruptly in a precipitous rock some thirty yards further along, there is no fear of being run over by traffic.

What an evening of delight that was! How Basil and Viola laughed, and how pleased was grandfather! Another thing is quite certain--that the Alfresco Entertainers in no way lost by the alterations they had made in their programme; the rest of the audience seemed as pleased as Basil and Viola, and no one appeared to miss the “giddy little girl in the big black hat” the least little bit in the world.

“Really, it’s vastly civil of Mr. Thingummy,” said grandfather on their way home.

* * * * *

Grandfather and Harnet had gone fishing for the whole day. Mademoiselle had departed, only Polly was left in charge, and she had so bad a headache--she put it down to the close, cloudy weather--that she was fain to go and lie down directly she had waited upon Basil and Viola at their lunch, having given the children permission to go for a walk along the beach.

It was a grey day, humid and still, and, being low tide, there seemed no fresh wind blowing in from the sea as usual. The children scrambled over the rocks, very happy and important at being, for once, left to their own devices, and they decided to make an expedition to a little sandy bay that can be reached from the shore at low tide, and to come back by a steep winding path up the cliffs which terminates in the coach road just above the village. They had not considered it necessary to confide their intention to Polly, who would certainly have objected. They reached the bay all right, paddled for a little time on the hard, smooth sand, and then set out to climb the path which winds in and out of the side of the cliff for all the world like a spiral staircase up to some nine hundred feet above the sea. This path is so narrow that travelers can only walk in Indian file. On the one side is the steep face of the heather-clad rock, on the other a sheer drop on to the rocks below.

When the children had climbed about a third of the way they found themselves enveloped in white mist--a mist so thick, and fine, and clinging, that you cannot see your own hand held before your face. It was no use to go down again; the tide had turned, and soon the sea would be lapping gently at the foot of the pathway. There was nothing for it but to go on slowly, carefully, step by step, feeling all the time for the rocks on the inner side; by and by the path would widen.

“Don’t be frightened, Viola,” said Basil cheerfully. “It’ll take us a goodish while, but a bit higher up we can walk together.”

“I’m not exactly frightened,” said Viola in a tremulous voice, “but I rather wish we hadn’t come.”

“So do I,” Basil answered fervently. “If I hadn’t been such a juggins I’d have looked up and seen the mist on those cliffs long ago. Probably you can’t see that there _are_ any cliffs in the village now.”

On they toiled, slowly and painfully. It is really a most unpleasant mode of progression, walking sideways up a hill with your back against a very nubbly sort of wall.

“Hark!” cried Basil presently. “Didn’t you hear a call?”

The children paused, leant against the cliff, and listened breathlessly. Sure enough someone was calling. It sounded very muffled and far off; but it was plainly a man’s voice, and he was calling for help.

“Do you think it’s above or below?” Basil asked anxiously. “I can’t seem to tell in this fog.”

“It must be above, or we should have heard it before. Call out that we’re coming.”

Basil shouted with all the force of his young lungs, and again the faint, muffled voice answered with a cry for help.

“Come on,” exclaimed Basil in great excitement; “we’ll find him!” and sure enough in another bend of the path Basil nearly fell over the prostrate figure of a man lying right across it, for here it suddenly grew wider. The man raised himself on his elbow, exclaiming:

“I say, do you think that when you get to the village you could send help? I’m very much afraid that I’ve broken my leg. I can’t stand, and moving at all hurts it no end.”

“Why, it’s the jokey man!” Basil cried out in dismay. “However did you do it?”

“Oh, dear! oh, dear!” added Viola. “This is sad.”

None of them could see the other, but nevertheless, the jokey man knew in a minute who had come to his rescue, and forgot his injuries in his surprise, exclaiming:

“Whatever are you two doing here? Is the General with you?”

“Oh, dear, no,” said Viola proudly; “we’re _quite_ alone, or we shouldn’t be here, but isn’t it a good thing we _are_ here? How did you fall?”

“I was mooning along, not thinking where I was going, when down came the mist. I made a false step and went bang over the edge, but only fell on to the path below, not right over, as I might have done.... Perhaps it would have been better if I had,” he added to himself.

“You’d better go and get help, Basil,” said Viola decidedly, “and I’ll stay and take care of Mr. Smith till they come.”

But Mr. Smith wouldn’t hear of this. The children helped him to crawl as near the inner side as possible, and when they left him he nearly fainted with the pain of moving. It began to rain, the cold, soft, wetting rain of a Devonshire summer, and Mr. Smith groaned and shivered.

“I am so sorry for you,” said a soft voice close beside him. “Is there nothing I could do? Wouldn’t you be more comfortable if you were to rest your head in my lap? It would be a sort of pillow. Daddie used to go to sleep like that sometimes out on the moors last summer, when they were home.”

“Oh, Viola, Viola!” exclaimed the jokey man, with far more distress than he had yet shown, “why did you stay? You will get cold. It’s raining already, and they will be ages.”

“There’s no use worrying about that,” said Viola, edging herself nearer. “We couldn’t leave you here all alone and hurt, and Basil wouldn’t let me go on to the village ’cause of the fog, so of course I stayed. I hope you won’t mind very much; I won’t talk if you’d rather not, but I think I’d like to hold your hand if you don’t mind. It would be comforting.”

The kind little hand was curiously comforting to the jokey man: he insisted on taking off his coat and wrapping Viola in it, in spite of all her protests. Presently the white pall of mist lifted a little and they could see one another, and it certainly was a great pleasure to the man lying against the cliff to watch the little high-bred face with the kind blue eyes turned in such friendly wise toward him. Viola was so like Basil, and yet so entirely individual. Basil’s face was round, hers was oval; Basil’s nose was broad and indefinite as yet, Viola’s nose was small and straight and decided, with the dearest little band of freckles across the bridge. Basil’s manner was extremely friendly, Viola’s was tender and protecting, and it was such a long time since anyone had taken care of the jokey man, that he almost crooned to himself in the delight of being so tended. She was very tender in her inquiries after his aches and pains, expressed a pious hope that he always wore “something woolly next him,” and being reassured on that head, proceeded to suggest that he should smoke if he found it comforting. Then she told him a great deal in very admirative terms about daddy, and grandfather, and Basil, for Viola was of that old-fashioned portion of femininity that looks upon her own mankind as beings of stupendous strength and wisdom. The man lay watching her very intently, but it is not certain that he heard half of what she was saying. He had the look of one who was trying to make a difficult decision. The voices of habit and tradition called very loudly to him just then--dared he listen?

Presently Viola’s voice ceased. She was evidently waiting for an answer, and none came.

“Have you any sisters, Mr. Smith?” she repeated.

Mr. Smith shook his head, then he raised himself on his elbow, saying earnestly:

“Look here, Viola! I want you to tell me exactly what you think about something. Suppose Basil--of course it’s utterly impossible, but still--suppose that when he was grown up he did something that annoyed you all very much, something disappointing and entirely against his father’s wishes”--he paused, for Viola looked very grave and pained--“and then,” he continued, “if he went right out of sight, and you, none of you, heard anything more about him for nearly a year--supposing _then_ he was sorry, said he was sorry----”

“We should never lose sight of Basil,” said Viola decidedly, her eyes dark and tragic at the mere thought. “At least, I’m sure I shouldn’t; whatever he did I should love him just the same. You don’t love people for their goodness--you love them because they’re _they_.”

“Are you sure?” asked the jokey man earnestly.

Viola looked hard at him, turned very red, and said shyly:

“Do you think you could tell me just what you did? I know it’s you.”

The man leant back against the wall again.

“It’s not an interesting story,” he said wearily, “but it may pass the time. I was at the ’varsity, Cambridge. I was always very fond of acting, and I was extravagant and lazy, too. The very term I went in for my degree I was acting in the A.D.C., and--I was plucked. My father was furious. Then came a whole sheaf of debts. He said I must go back to a small college, live on next to nothing, work, and take my degree. Instead of taking my punishment like a man, I quarreled with everybody, vowed I’d go on to the stage, and came to this. I have kept body and soul together, and I don’t think I’ve done anything to be ashamed of since, but I’m sick and sorry at the whole business. Yet now that I’m all smashed up and useless, it seems somehow mean to go back. My father’s a parson, you know, not over well off, and there are a good many of us.”

All the pauses in his story, and there were a good many, had been punctuated by Viola with reassuring little pats, and now that the pause was so long that he seemed to have finished his story, she turned a beaming face toward him.

“How _glad_ they will be!” she exclaimed. “You must write to-night directly you get back. How _glad_ your mother will be!”

A spasm of pain crossed his face. “My mother died just before I left school,” he said.

Viola’s eyes filled with tears, and she had just exclaimed, “And you have no sisters either, you poor dear?” when the rescue party, accompanied by Basil and the nearly frantic Polly, appeared just below them. They carried the jokey man to the foot of the cliff and took him back to the village in a boat, and as his ankle proved to be very badly broken he elected to go into the cottage hospital on the hill. The long wait in the wet, that had not in the least hurt Viola, proved altogether too much for the jokey man. That night he became feverish and delirious, and when the children and the General went to ask for him next day, they were told that he was very ill indeed, and that the broken ankle was quite a small matter in comparison with the pneumonia. That evening the doctor called on the General, and directly the performance was over, the General went to see the Alfresco Players at their lodgings.

“Do you happen to know who his people are?” the General asked Mrs. Montmorency.

“He never let on that he’d got any folks, poor fellah,” she answered with a sob. She had a kind heart if her ankles were thick. “He was never one to talk about himself, and he’s never had so much as a postcard by post since he’s been here, that I do know. His real name’s not Smith at all; all his linen--beautiful and fine his shirts are too--is all marked ‘Selsley.’”

“Have you no idea what part of the country he came from?” the General asked. “Then we could look in a directory. It would be a horrible thing if----”

“He joined us in London,” Mrs. Montmorency gasped between her sobs, while her tears made little pathways on her painted cheeks. “He hadn’t any references, but I persuaded my husband to take him. He carried his references in his face, I said, and so I’m sure we’ve found it, for a nicer, more obliging, gentlemanly----”

“Do you think, sir,” Mr. Montmorency interrupted, “that he told the little lady anything about himself when they were up on the cliff together?”

“God bless my soul!” exclaimed the General in great excitement. “Of course he did; I have it. Who has got a clergy list?”

Naturally none of the Alfresco Players possessed such a work, and it was already too late to knock up the vicar of the parish. But next morning the General called on the vicar very early, and then despatched an exceedingly long telegram to the post office and several bottles of champagne to the cottage hospital, where Polly, Basil and Viola hung about the doors all the morning hoping for better news. The Alfresco Players got out a green leaflet to the effect that there would be that night a benefit performance for that talented artist, Mr. Smith, who had been suddenly stricken down by serious illness. The General seemed to send and receive a great many telegrams, and did not go fishing all that day. At sundown there was no better news at the hospital, and it seemed exceedingly probable that the jokey man would joke no more. The General met the last train, and drove away from the station accompanied by an elderly, severe-looking clergyman. They stopped at the hospital and the clergyman went in.

* * * * *

The jokey man was so noisy and talked so continuously that the hospital authorities had him moved from the men’s surgical ward into a little room by himself. As the matron showed the strange clergyman into this room, a nurse rose from the chair at the bedside. The jokey man’s voice was no longer loud, but he kept saying the same thing over and over again.

“All day long he keeps repeating it,” she whispered. “I’m so thankful you’ve come, for he can’t possibly last if this restlessness continues.”

“I’m sure he’ll come if you send,” the weak, irritable voice went on. “Why don’t you send? I want my father--‘father, I have sinned’--that’s it--‘father, I have sinned’--but I know he’ll come if you send. I want my father, I tell you--why won’t you send? I want my father.”

The whispering voice persisted in its plaint, the hot hands plucked at the sheet when other hands closed over them, holding them firmly, and the voice he was waiting for said quietly:

“My dear son, I am here.”

As the sick man raised his tired eyes to the grave grey face bent over him, his troubled mind was flooded with an immense content, his poignant restlessness was calmed.

“Good old father!” he said softly, and lay quite still.

The jokey man thought better of it, and didn’t die after all. In another week Basil and Viola were allowed to go and see him. They stood very hushed and solemn on either side of his bed, for he looked very thin and white, and was still lying right on his back, which made him seem more ill somehow. For quite a minute nobody said anything at all, till Basil, who held a large folded bracken leaf in his hand, laid it down on the jokey man’s chest and spread it out. A fish speckled with brown reposed in solemn glory in the midst.

“It’s for your dinner,” whispered Basil. “It’s only four ounces off the pound. I caught it myself two hours ago. Viola saw me do it. I think a ‘Coachman’s’ the best fly after all.”

IN DURANCE VILE

Gabrielle always remembered the day that the ringmaster of the circus came to see her pony jump. She was proud of her pony, who was dapple grey and Welsh, and could jump nine inches higher than himself.

Gabrielle was five, and had ridden without a leading rein for two years, but her father never let her jump Roland, the pony. So the pony jumped by himself, greatly to the edification of the ringmaster who had been bidden to see the feat.

While all this was going on, Nana called her to nursery tea, and as she trotted down the long yard, past the stables, and towards the drive, the ringmaster turned to Jack Ainslie, Gabrielle’s father, and said: “Has the little Missie hurt her foot? She’s a thought lame.”

Jack Ainslie looked hastily after the idolized little figure, and noted that the ringmaster was right. She _was_ a thought lame.

Hastily excusing himself, he ran after the child. “Have you hurt your foot, darling?” he asked anxiously. “You’re limping a little. Did you twist your ankle?”

“Oh, no, Daddy dear, I’m not hurt. I’m going to tea.” Gabrielle put up her face for the ever-expected kiss and ran after her nurse. Jack Ainslie dismissed the subject from his mind and showed the ringmaster the rest of the horses.

From that day, however, things changed for Gabrielle. Other people noticed the little limp, and her parents, terrified and distressed, sent for the family doctor. He discovered that in some way, probably at birth, her hip had been dislocated, and had formed a new socket for itself, and that henceforth she would limp--unless--and here all the mischief began--something could be done. Her father was frantic. Of course something must be done. That his Gabrielle, his dainty little lady with her pretty face, her quick intelligence, and her gracious ways, should be lame--oh, it was intolerable! He was broken-hearted and rebellious, and even his wife’s steadfast patience and unchanging tenderness could not make him resigned. Then began for Gabrielle a series of visits to London. She was taken from one great doctor to another till she grew quite used to marching about on thick piled carpets, clad in nothing but her sunny hair, while they discussed her interesting “case.”

“Doctors are chilly men,” said Gabrielle; “their hands are always cold to my body.”

An operation was arranged, but at the last moment Jack Ainslie drew back, for the surgeons would not guarantee success, and the family doctor said grave things about Gabrielle’s constitutional delicacy. So it was decided that more gradual means must be tried to bring about the desired result. The “gradual means” assumed the shape of an instrument, hideous to behold and painful to wear. It broke Jack Ainslie’s heart to see his little lady cabined and confined in such a cruel cage, and for the little lady herself it blotted out the sunshine and made life very grey and terrible. One thing was quite plain to Gabrielle, and that was that evidently Nature was very much to blame in having provided a new “socket” for the poor little dislocated bone. This impertinence must be interfered with at all costs--the doctors seemed to agree upon that. And Gabrielle wondered why it was so wrong to have no pain, to be perfectly unconscious of her “affliction,” as her nurse called it, and so interesting (to the doctors) and right, to be uncomfortable and to wear a hideous high-soled boot and an iron cage, with crutches under the arms that pushed her shoulders up to her ears.

As for the instrument, it was designed and ordered by three famous surgeons, and it cost the price of many ponies. Gabrielle tried to be brave. She was curiously conscious that the pain her parents suffered was far greater than her own. The instrument was adjusted in London, and on the way home in the train her mother asked her many times, “Does it hurt you, my darling?” And Gabrielle always answered bravely, “I can bear it, mother dear; I can bear it!”

When she got home that night, the poor little leg was black from the cruel pressure, and Mary Ainslie broke down and cried till she could cry no longer. Gabrielle tried to walk bravely in her cramping irons, and to smile at her parents when she met their troubled eyes. At first she broke the thing continually, for she was an active child, much given to jumping off chairs and playing at circus on the big old sofa. But by and by all desire to jump and run left her. She grew high-shouldered, and would sit very still for hours, while her daddy told her stories or drove her behind Roland in a little basket-carriage he had bought for her. Truly the iron entered into her soul, the cruel iron that cramped the child’s soft body; and Gabrielle’s eyes grew larger and larger, and her chin more pointed, while the once plump little hands were white as the petals of the pear-blossom outside the nursery window.

“I wish people wouldn’t ask me about it; they are kind, but I wish they wouldn’t,” Gabrielle would say. “I’m tired of telling them about the socket, and I’m not ‘a poor little soul’--I’m daddy’s little lady!”

There came to Jack Ainslie a very old college friend, a doctor, Gabrielle’s godfather, and devoted to her, and he was supremely dissatisfied with her treatment and implored them to take her to see a young surgeon, a friend of his own, who was making a great name, and doing wonders for everyone who came under his care. Jack Ainslie and his wife needed but small persuasion, and it was decided that Gabrielle should go to London as soon as possible.

What hastened the visit was this: Gabrielle was devoted to fairy lore, and a favorite play of hers was to be the beautiful princess who is freed from giants and dragons and lions by the gallant “Boots” of the Norse tales. Her father always enacted the part of that redoubtable third son, and was wont to kneel before her, making extravagant protestations of his devotion, which she accepted with gracious condescension. On this particular afternoon, just after tea, her father proposed to play the favorite game, but Gabrielle would have none of it. “I can’t be a princess any more, Daddy; I’m sure no princess ever wore an instrument!” she said. “I don’t feel like a princess any more at all.” Her father caught her up in his arms, with a great hard sob, which frightened her, and she stroked his face, saying tenderly: “Don’t be sorry, dear, dear Dad! I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’ll be a princess, I will, indeed! I _will_ feel like a princess really!” The next day Jack Ainslie and his wife took Gabrielle up to town. They did not even take the faithful Nana, for Gabrielle’s mother could hardly bear to let any hands but hers touch her darling, ever since the day that the ringmaster had made his sad discovery.

Mary Ainslie took Gabrielle to the new doctor the following morning, while Jack sat in the smoking-room of the hotel, lighting innumerable cigars which he did not smoke, and turning over illustrated papers which he did not see. Then he turned out of the hotel and walked down Piccadilly, blundering into the passers-by, and when he crossed the road, was nearly ridden over by an omnibus, so blind and stupid was he in his heavy sorrow. Poor Jack! his honest heart was very full of grief, for he loved his little lady dearly, and he felt that unless something were done quickly, he would soon have nothing but a tender memory to love.

Gabrielle and her mother were shown into the new doctor’s consulting-room at once. He was a tall young man, with red hair and keen green eyes. Her mother undressed Gabrielle, all but the “instrument,” which clasped the tender little body, and seemed so cruelly unnecessary. The young doctor frowned when he saw it, then he took it off himself, and Gabrielle noticed that his touch was as gentle as her mother’s, and that his hands were warm. She gave a happy little shake when she was free of it, a little wriggle and jump of relief. Then the doctor made her walk, and felt her all over, after which he rolled her up in a big fur rug, to sit in front of the fire, while he went into the next room with her mother. They were not long away, and on their return Gabrielle looked up at the doctor with bright, curious eyes.

“Does the instrument hurt you?” he asked. Gabrielle looked at it, as it leaned feebly against a chair, and said: “It does, rather; but it does its best not to. I think...!”

“Well, any way, you’re not going to wear it any more. Are you glad?”

“But what will the socket do?”

“Bless me, child; they’ve talked about you far too much. The socket will do beautifully--much better without it than with it!”

“May I wear shoes like other little girls?”

“Certainly; the prettiest shoes that can be got!”

“Not compensatum shoes?”

“No; ordinary shoes, exactly alike!”

By this time Gabrielle had been arrayed in some clothes. She noticed that her mother’s hands trembled, but that her eyes were glad. The child looked up at the tall young doctor, who was watching her with his keen green eyes, and said: “My Daddy will be so glad. He will look at me, and not look so sorry, and there will be no hard things to stick into him when he cuddles me! He will be so glad!”

The doctor made a queer little sound in his throat; then he lifted Gabrielle in his arms and carried her to the window.

“Do you see the end of this street,” he asked, “where the roar and the rumbling sound comes from? That’s Oxford Street. Well, in that street is a beautiful shop full of shoes--shoes for little girls--and you are going there directly, to get the prettiest pair that mother can find for you!”

“May they have silver buckles?” Gabrielle asked eagerly.

“I think it extremely advisable they should have big silver buckles. You will walk both fast and far in buckles shoes, and you must learn to dance the _tarantella_, and all the dolls will sit in a row to watch you!”

Gabrielle gave a delighted laugh. “Will the leg that wore the irons get fat again, like the other?”

“Oh, dear, yes! You mustn’t think about that leg any more, but you must do all the exercises mother is going to show you, and when you can hang on a trapeze for twenty minutes, without falling off, you must write and tell me.”

Then Gabrielle’s mother finished dressing her, all but her boots. The boot with the “compensatum” sole lay near the instrument. Gabrielle looked at it with great aversion. “It’s a very dry day,” said she. “May I go to the cab in my stockings, and not put on no shoes till I have my new ones?”

The doctor pushed the little boot out of sight, under the chair, with his foot, and said: “I’ll carry you to the cab, and mother or the cabman will carry you to the shop across the pavement, and you shall never see that iron horror or that boot again!”

As the doctor carried her across the hall, Gabrielle put her arms round his neck, and kissed him on both his eyes.

“Your eyes taste very salt!” she said, “But you are the best doctor in the world!”

THE SURRENDER OF LADY GRIZELL

Geordie had found the world a rather draughty place since that March morning when his mother went out hunting and was brought back in a strange secret fashion, and he saw her face no more.

“Your poor Ma’s met with a haccident, Master Geordie--poor lady she’ve broke her back and now she’s gone to ’Eaven.”

So Nana explained things to him. New black clothes came from the tailor’s, and Geordie went with Nana to lay flowers upon his mother’s grave.

At five years old discomfort is felt, rather than defined; Geordie was conscious of a difference, an uncomfortable difference in his surroundings, but by no means directly traced its cause to the loss of his mother. Nor was he actively miserable. It is true that he sometimes wondered why Nana so often omitted his bath in the morning, and why he was never dressed to go down in the evening; but in some respects he had quite a dissipated time. So many people asked him out to tea, and amusement of which Nana distinctly approved, for she went too.

Geordie regarded his father with immense admiration, he was so tall, and handsome, and jolly. But since that day when everything was altered, the Hon. Donald Cochran found less time than ever to devote to Geordie. It is true he did not go out hunting any more, but he seemed always to be shut up in that hitherto almost unused room--called the “study,” sorting papers and interviewing stout gentlemen, who wore aggressive watch-chains, and whose footsteps were much lighter than those of the hunting friends who used to come about the house.

After a month of vague loneliness and discomfort there came a change in Geordie’s fortunes. His aunt, Lady Grizell Fane, who had been abroad at the time of Mrs. Cochran’s death, appeared upon the scene.

A tall woman, with keen grey eyes, a woman who observed much and said little--Lady Grizell after three days realized the exact position of affairs. On the fourth day she went back to the Towers, taking Geordie with her.

Lady Grizell was one of those women, so often childless, in whom the maternal instinct is passionately alive. The love of children was a religion with her, and all the love she would have lavished on her own child had the fates bestowed one on her, she lavished upon Geordie.

The world suddenly became a sunny, sheltered place for the lonely little boy. Baths were plentiful and nursery tableclothes were clean, as meals were regular. Above all, somebody wanted him, somebody took an interest in his doings, and a great warm human love “enwheeled him round.” A new experience this for Geordie--no one had ever been actively unkind to him, his mother had looked after his creature comforts thoroughly. He was always well dressed and well tended, but she had never found his society particularly interesting, nor did she manifest any desire to see him often during the day. Though a fine strong child, he was too like the Cochrans to be pretty. Big nose, grey eyes, thin face, high cheekbones, and dogged mouth, may be well enough in a man, but in a child are apt to be all indefinite and out of proportion. No, Geordie was not a pretty child. Neither was he very clever; but he was honest and kind-hearted, and he worshipped those who were kind to him, Aunt Grizell most of all.

Uncle Fane was a philanthropist, absorbed in blue books and statistics. When Parliament was sitting he went to London, while Aunt Grizell not infrequently preferred to remain with Geordie at the Towers.

Geordie learned to ride with his aunt (his father had never been able to afford a pony for him, it takes such a lot of money to keep hunters), he did gardening with her, and with her he learned to read indifferently well. But he learned many things more important than these.

He learned to be immensely proud of “the family,” to hold the reigning house in due respect certainly, but with reservations in favor of one Charles Edward, and his descendants, for whose sake “the family” had greatly dared and suffered. He learned that he must be courteous and deferent in his manners, true and just in all his dealings, and that he must control his temper, which, like that of the rest of the family, was inclined to be hasty. Moreover, he quickly discovered that his aunt _was_ herself all she would have him be. To know that a thing grieved her was enough with Geordie to prevent its happening again, so they were very happy.

His father came from time to time to spend a few days at the Towers, praised his improved appearance, and his seat in the saddle, took him out shooting on occasions, and was always profuse in his thanks to his sister for her care of the boy.

But this happy and peaceful state of things was not to last. A cloud came over the horizon. Lady Grizell went about with red eyes and a harrassed look, and Geordie found Uncle Fane regarding him with an expression, kindlier than of yore certainly, but in which he discovered so large a proportion of pity that he resented it, without knowing why.

Then Lord Lochmaben, his father’s eldest brother, came to the Towers. During his visit, the child was always hearing scraps of conversation in which the words “madness,” “that woman,” and “social suicide” occurred with bewildering frequency. He felt that in some mysterious way these irrelevant remarks had some bearing on his own fortunes. Lord Lochmaben also regarded him with that strange pitying expression, and during his lordship’s visit, Aunt Grizell’s eyes were redder, and her manner more perturbed than ever.

At last, one morning at the end of May--Geordie will always hate the scent of the lilacs--Lady Grizell called him from his play to come to her in the morning room.

He came, running through the open French window, and when he reached his aunt’s chair she put her arm round him, saying huskily: “Geordie dear! your father wants you at home, until September--and then you are to go to school!”

Lady Grizell made the announcement abruptly. To her surprise it was received in absolute silence. Geordie was, as his aunt herself would have said, “utterly dumbfoundered.” To go to school some day was natural and proper--but to go home.... “Why does father want me now?” asked Geordie in a shaky voice. The Hon. Donald never betrayed any distress at parting from him when he left the Towers--what could it mean?

The child was very like “the family,” he was not at all demonstrative, and he “thought shame” to cry.

He flung his arms round his aunt, holding her so tight that the buttons of his Norfolk jacket made deep dents on her cheek, and Lady Grizell could hear how painfully the little heart was thumping.

There was silence for a minute between these two who understood each other so well; then Geordie asked: “When am I to go, Aunt Grizy?”

“In a week--oh, what shall I do without you, my bonnie man?”

“But I shall come to see you often, shan’t I? Papa won’t want me all the time, and you will ask him to let me come often, won’t you, Aunty?”

Lady Grizell stroked his hair tenderly, but she could not deceive even a child, and she shook her head.

“I’ll ask him, my dear, you may be sure. But I fear he may not be able to grant my request. Unfortunately, there is a subject upon which your father and I cannot agree, and he is vexed with me, and naturally wants his son for himself.”

“Is it that ‘suicide woman’ that is the subject?” asked Geordie breathlessly.

Lady Grizell gazed at him in thunderstruck amazement. “What _do_ you mean, child?”

“Well, whenever I was out walking with Uncle Lochmaben and Uncle Fane, I kept hearing little bits about ‘that woman’ and ‘suicide’ and papa, so I thought it might be that. I didn’t listen, truly--I couldn’t help hearing, and I didn’t understand.”

Lady Grizell put back the hair from the boy’s square forehead and looked into his honest grey eyes, then she spoke:

“Geordie dear, there are always things in life that we cannot understand, and things we cannot help; what we must do is to be as brave and honest as we can, and leave the rest to God. Your dear father is very lonely and he has recently married a lady who will be your new mamma. You must try to be as good and courteous and obedient to her as you are to me--and Geordie, son! don’t forget me!”

Here Lady Grizell broke down, and Geordie thought it no shame to cry too.

That week was terribly short. At the end of it Geordie went out into the draughty world again, while Lady Grizell went about saying like her more famous namesake: “Oh, werena my heart lecht I wad dee!”

Geordie could never be induced to speak much about the three months that followed. During those three months Lady Grizell grew thin and pale.

One morning she received a letter from the Hon. Donald in which he informed her that he and his wife had made arrangements for Geordie to go in September to an excellent school in the Forest of Dean where boys received board and education for the modest sum of twenty guineas a year.

Lady Grizell gave a little cry, and stared at the letter in her hand as though it had been some horrible phantom. Then she flew downstairs and into her husband’s study, where he sat writing a report for the Society of Agriculture.

“Augustus, read this! I am going to see Donald to-day, and tell him that I will receive his wife--I can’t let my pride stand in the way of that child any longer--read this!” and she thrust the letter under her husband’s aristocratic nose.

Mr. Fane put on his glasses, read the letter, took them off, folded them up and put them in the case--a methodical, deliberate man, Mr. Fane--then he said slowly:

“Have you considered what people will say? Have you forgotten that everybody knows her most unpleasant story?”