when jack entered his mother’s house that afternoon he looked as if he had left boyhood behind him for ever. his face was drawn and pinched, his eyes were swollen with weeping, his rosy mouth was pale and compressed.
“his grace is to go to the duchess at once, and alone, if you please, sir,” said one of the servants.
“go upstairs to your mother,” said mr. lane to the child.
but jack stood irresolute, his hands clenched involuntarily, his breath was uneven.
“go,” repeated his tutor.
jack obeyed, and mounted the staircase with slow, unwilling steps; his heart was aching as it had never ached in his life.
“it’s hit him hard, hasn’t it, sir?” said the servant to the tutor, and smiled a discreet but eloquent smile.
mr. lane seemed not to hear, and went into the study; the boy passed out of sight amongst the heaths and poinsettias on the staircase, a stray pale london sunbeam following his golden head. his mother was alone.
she was seated at the other end of the room with her back to the little light there was. she looked haggard and apprehensive.
“is he dead?” she said in a low, awed tone; she knew he was by the face of her little son. “is he dead, dear?”
jack looked at her in silence; his eyes had a seriousness in them which was rather a man’s than a child’s, stern, scornful, reproachful.
“jack, don’t stare like that! speak to me! is harry dead?”
as she spoke she crossed the distance between them and tried to take the child in her embrace; she was alarmed and nervous. what had the dying man said?
jack recoiled from her outstretched arms and continued to look at her with the gaze she sought to evade.
[469]his expression terrified her extremely; what could the boy know that he was old enough to understand?
“jack, darling, speak to me,” she said faintly.
“i—i—don’t know much,” said the child slowly in a voice which seemed no more his own. “i don’t—know—much; but i think you are a wicked, wicked, wicked woman. and you killed him.”
then, without waiting for any answer or remonstrance, jack turned his back on her and went slowly to the door.
his mother was agitated beyond expression; she was for the moment paralyzed and could think of nothing which she could do or say. she let her son pass out of the room without censure or inquiry or punishment. she threw herself down upon the cushions of a couch and wept.
her sorrow was real for the moment. as far as she had ever really cared for anyone in a sense of tenderness, she had loved harry. but it was not long before her grief gave way to violent indignation. how ungenerous, how ungentlemanlike, it had been of him to speak ill of her to her child!
she had no doubt that he had done so, for it never occurred to her that jack’s active mind had unaided arrived at its just estimate of herself, and that the instincts of the boy had made him see in her the true assassin of his dear dead friend.
the bitterness of her anger dried the well springs of her grief. when she felt herself injured, she always thought that the whole world should rise up and do battle for her. for a man base enough to set her son against her there could be no occasion to mourn; especially when to mourn would compromise her before others. she had no anxiety about what correspondence harry might have left behind him, for when he had gone to africa he had sent her all her letters and other mementoes. she ordered her carriage and drove into the park as usual; then she dined early at a club with some friends, and did a theatre, and went afterward with a merry party to supper at the papillons club.
that is how helen mourns for paris nowadays.
the obligation to laugh a little louder than usual for fear people should suppose you are sorry; a little shiver of[470] regret when you are coming home alone in your brougham; a few drops more chloral than usual when you do get home—these are the only sacrifices that need to be made on the funeral pyre of the lover of to-day.
jack did not sleep all night. he had sobbed himself into a heavy, agitated slumber as the day dawned, and his tutor had given orders that he should not be disturbed. when he had risen, had bathed, and been dressed, it was eleven o’clock in the forenoon, and he slipped out of sight of his servant, and instead of going to breakfast with mr. lane ran out of the house and came to seek his uncle ronald, who happened to be in town on business; he was seldom in town for anything else. as hurstmanceaux opened the hall door of his rooms to go down into the street, he saw with surprise the figure of a boy in sailor clothes standing on the head of the stairs.
“is that you, jack?” he said, recognizing his nephew. “you don’t look well. is anything the matter?”
“may i speak to you?” said jack, standing on the threshold with his sailor hat in his hand.
“certainly—come in,” replied hurstmanceaux, surprised to see the boy unaccompanied. “are you alone?”
“yes,” said jack; and he came and stood before his uncle; his face was grave, his eyes had dark circles under them; he looked very still, pale, and spiritless.
“harry is dead,” he said heavily, with a strange hopeless tone in his voice.
“i have heard so,” replied ronald, coldly and unfeelingly, as he felt. “is that what you have come to say?”
“no,” said jack. “i have come to tell you i will not live with my mother any longer.”
it was the first time he had called her formally mother. hurstmanceaux looked at him in great surprise.
“that is a very grave statement,” he said at last. “don’t you know that you have no will of your own? you are a minor.”
jack was silent, but his face grew very resolute; his uncle saw that he was in earnest.
“you wish to live no longer with your mother?” said ronald slowly. “may i ask your reasons?”
“i shall not tell my reasons,” said jack haughtily,[471] with the color coming back into his face, hotly and painfully.
hurstmanceaux appreciated the answer; it did not anger him as it would have done most men.
“did you see lord brancepeth before he died?” he asked.
“yes.”
“did he tell you to say this?”
“no.”
jack’s lips quivered, but he manfully strove not to cry.
hurstmanceaux was perplexed. he dimly perceived the workings of the boy’s mind, and he sympathized with them; but he could not let his sympathy be shown.
“put me down in the country somewhere,” said jack, seeing his auditor was with him. “i don’t want grooms, and watches, and dressing-cases, and rubbish; i want to be alone down in the country.”
“my dear child,” said ronald, “what is this new idea? why do you want to bury yourself in a hermitage at your age? i am not your only guardian, jack. there’s lord augustus.”
“then send me to school,” said jack desperately. “people as young as i go to schools. i tell you,” he added, and his teeth were shut tight as he said it, “i tell you, i will not live with her.”
hurstmanceaux was silent, extremely perplexed, but moved to more feeling for the boy than he had ever felt.
“i will not live with her,” jack repeated between his teeth. “i know i am a minor at present and that you can lock me up, and all that sort of thing, but if you make me live with her i will kill myself. a quite little boy, littler than i, killed himself the other day, only because his pensum was too hard. it was put in the papers. it is quite easy, and it doesn’t hurt—much.”
hurstmanceaux was still silent. other men would have seized the occasion to point out the unlawfulness of suicide, but he refrained from any rebuke. he saw that the boy was in that kind of mood when nothing which is said in censure can pierce through the heavy fog of a dull despairing sorrow: the fog can only be penetrated by the sunshine of sympathy.
[472]“you don’t like me, do you, jack?” he said at last.
jack was silent through truthfulness and courtesy.
“if you did,” said hurstmanceaux, “i would take you to live with me at faldon, and give you an oxford friend of mine for a tutor; i don’t like the man you have. this is of course subject to lord augustus’s approval. would faldon suit you, if he did not disapprove?”
“yes,” said jack rather coldly. “he told me to try and grow up like you; so i suppose he would have liked me to live with you.”
“who said that?”
“he did—harry.”
hurstmanceaux felt an embarrassment which jack was quick to perceive.
he moved a little nearer to his uncle with the first impulse of confidence he had ever shown in him.
“he gave me cuckoopint,” he said, with the tears gushing from his eyes. “the cob cuckoopint. may he go to faldon? but i’ll groom him myself, if you please. i want to be a man, not a fool. he told me to——”
then jack’s voice broke down with a great sob in his throat.
“i beg your pardon,” he said in a suffocated voice, and turned that hurstmanceaux should not see his grief.
“i think you will be a man,” said hurstmanceaux as he laid his hand on the child’s shoulder. “don’t sob so. it will vex your friend—if he knows.”
“yes; but will he know?” cried jack wildly. “will anyone tell him i remember? oh, i loved him!” cried the boy with a piteous wail. “and she killed him; she killed him, i am sure!”
“hush!” said hurstmanceaux. “you are not old enough to judge of these things. i am very sorry for you, for you are too young to have so much pain. look, ossian, too, is sorry. he is coming up to you. lie down on that bear-skin, and try to compose yourself. i will do all i can for you. you do not like me, i know, but i think you feel you can trust me.”
jack made a sign of assent; his face was hidden in his hands.
“my poor boy, i am very, very sorry,” said hurstmanceaux,[473] whose own voice was unsteady. “whatever lord brancepeth’s life may have been, its end was that of a hero. think of that, dear, always. you cannot have better or truer consolation.”
alberic orme, whom hurstmanceaux always consulted, approved the project, and lord augustus had found that the easiest way for his own convenience of discharging his duties to his wards was to say in a benign ecclesiastical manner: “my dear hurstmanceaux, i have every confidence in your judgment. whatever you decide i shall ratify, secure that in such acquiescence will lie my best provision for the welfare of my poor nephew’s children.”
therefore he made but little difficulty in allowing jack’s residence to be moved to faldon, and a new tutor substituted for the learned gentleman who had on his part found the little duke insupportable. cuckoopint went also to faldon; and jack, by his own wish, was instructed in the stable science of bedding, feeding, grooming and watering.
of course jack was only a boy, and his spirits came back to him in time, and his laugh rang through the old oak hall of his uncle’s house, but he did not forget. he never forgot.
when he had been left alone for the night he got up in his bed, and knelt on it, and said in a whisper, for fear his servant who slept in the next room should hear:
“please god, be good to harry, and tell him i remember.”
o fair illusion; fair, however false! happy is the dead soul which has left its image enshrined in the tender heart of a child!
