brancepeth, like hurstmanceaux, was sincerely unhappy through her, for a woman whom men love much, despite her faults and caprices, has an almost unlimited power of worrying and of torturing their less complex and more kindly natures. the breaking of a habit is always painful, and he had an affectionate soul. to have the door of stanhope street shut in his face hurt him as it hurts a kind-hearted st. bernard dog to be shut out of an accustomed house and left to pine on the area pavement.
she swept past him in her carriage with a distant bow which cut him to the quick. pride kept him from calling at her residence, but he could not help haunting the street to see the little black forms and golden heads of the children trotting off on their noonday walk, or jack, in solitary manhood, riding with his groom.
there was no one to whom he could appeal.
her sister, carrie wisbeach, the only one of her family who had ever liked him, had been three months away on a yachting journey round the world; and he felt, without ever hearing it said, that her people and her set approved the conduct of the duchess of otterbourne in having broken with him; they approved her more than if she had married him.
“mammy’s took away my punch, harry—the beautiful punch you giv’d me,” said jack, in woebegone accents; it had been a real punch, show box, puppets, a toby that squeaked, and a set of pandean pipes—a delicious toy with which jack could make believe to be “the man in the street” to his great ecstasy.
“she says i’m a little beast ’cos i have everythin’. what have i got? she’s even tooked away the punch. i haven’t got anything,” said the poor little man with tragic intensity.
“taken away the punch? oh, lord! that is real mean,” said brancepeth, with his face growing very dark.[327] “merely because i gave it you? what devils women are!”
“i always telled you, harry,” said jack solemnly. “i always telled you that mammy could be nasty. you’ve set her back up, that’s what you’ve done.”
jack was sitting astride of an exmoor pony with his left hand resting on the crupper, and his face turned full on his friend in melancholy reproach. harry was on the pedestrians’ side of the rails and had stopped the rider under a tree in full fresh leaf. this was the only way now in which he could see the children, when they were out walking or riding, and he managed to waylay them. the nursery doors were closed against him, and he felt his exile as bitterly as the cast-out peri of the poem.
“you should have put up with mammy,” said jack, with the superiority of a sage, “’cos you can’t come to us now she’s angry with you. and when she’s angry once, it lasts a long long while, for ever, and ever, and ever.”
his tone was very impressive; he spoke as if he had a hundred years’ experience behind him; and his big soft black eyes had tears in them; he missed his harry.
“you dear little beggar!” said brancepeth tenderly, but glancing apprehensively at the groom on the off-side. “don’t fidget your pony’s mouth, jack; keep your bridle hand quiet, low down and quiet.”
“that’s the little duke,” said some work-people walking past, and smiled good-naturedly.
“what a little love!” said some ladies.
“you’ve got tom tit, jack, and you’d better gallop him,” said brancepeth, nervously conscious of the open ears of the stolid and wooden-faced groom. “don’t let his grace hustle his pony; there can’t be a worse habit,” he said to that functionary. “never hustle your cattle, jack, do you understand? off with you, dear! i want to see how you go.”
he watched the pretty figure of the boy as tom tit skurried over the tan with his undocked tail switching the ground, and his sturdy, shaggy little head pulling wilfully at the bridle.
“took his punch away! good lord! what out-and-out[328] brutes women are,” he thought, as he leaned over the rail under the green leaves in the sunshine.
but his heart was heavy and his conscience ill at ease, and he envied hurstmanceaux the power he had over these children and their future.
“harry’s been hard hit over the oaks,” said one of his friends, staring after him, to another as they passed. “never saw him look so blue in all his days.”
“no; he’s got to marry lady kenny, i suspect,” said another of his friends, using the title by which she had been known to the town so long.
“if i go on as i am doing now, what shall i be when that dear little beggar’s a man?” he thought. he felt that he would be a very poor example for the child he loved. he felt that jack, who loved him in return, would get no good from him, but might be led into much evil. “i’ll try and pull up,” he said to himself. “if i’m alive twenty years hence, i should like those little chaps to be the better not the worse through knowing me.”
he sighed as he thought so, and then he laughed at himself for being in such a mood. they were cocky’s sons, of course! why should he bother about them? his laugh was bitter, but his heart was heavy.
she had used up all the best years of his life, and beggared him to boot, and he had no more power over her than if he had been the crossing-sweeper yonder in st. george’s place.
harry was not very wise, and the ways of his life had not been prudent, but a seriousness and sadness which he had never known came over him as he watched the exmoor pony till it was out of sight, and then walked on by himself in the opposite direction toward apsley house.
the next week he had a long interview with his father, and another with his colonel, and in a week or two more he sent in his papers.
“i shall never alter the pace here,” he said to his father, who, much relieved that he did not hear harry was going to marry the duchess of otterbourne, said, cordially: “no, my dear boy, we can’t get out of the swill till we’re clear of the stye!” by which elegant metaphor he meant life in london.
[329]it was growing hot and close in mayfair and belgravia, and jack went for his last ride in the park one sultry misty morning when the sky was like a grey woolen blanket, and the serpentine resembled a dull steel mirror as it reflected the forms of the ill-fed and melancholy water-birds.
tom tit and jack were going down on the morrow with the rest of the juvenile household to the country. their mother was already away from london.
jack was worrying his mind with wondering how he should see his favorite friend in the country. in other years harry had generally been where they were, that is to say, when they accompanied their mother to homburg, or carlsbad, or cowes, or staghurst, or scotland. but jack was uncomfortably and dimly conscious that those pleasant days were over and were not likely to be renewed. it is hard at his age to have to look back to the past with regret. but jack felt that nothing in his present was likely to be so agreeable as those merry days when his mother and harry had been such good friends.
it was very warm, heavy weather; even tom tit had not much scamper in him, and his rider let him amble slowly along whilst he himself pushed his sailor hat to the extreme back of his head and yawned, opening his rosy mouth as wide as it would go.
“men don’t yawn in their saddles, jack,” said a voice, which was music in his ears.
“oh!” he cried, with delight. he was on the north side of the park, no one was near, and brancepeth was walking where he had no business to be, as he was on foot. he came up to the child and greeted him, then turned to the groom:
“i want to speak to the duke a minute or two. you will wait here,” he said, as he slipped a gold piece into the man’s hand. “jump off, jack, and come with me.”
jack needed no second bidding.
the groom, with the sovereign in his whip hand, made no opposition, and harry walked away with the boy across the grass, talking to him as they went of horsemanship and all its etiquette, while jack’s face, gay and rosy in its happiness, was turned upward with adoring eyes.
[330]“i thought i shouldn’t see you again, harry,” he said, as he trotted along by his friend’s side. “we’re all going into the country to-morrow.”
“with your mother?” asked brancepeth.
“no; mammy’s at ems. boo’s so cross ’cos she’s got to stay with us. she won’t play at anything.”
“when did your mother go?”
“day before yesterday.”
brancepeth sighed.
“and she didn’t leave ’ny money, and she didn’t leave ’ny orders for us, and the servants went away, and there was nothin’ to eat, and the scullery-maid she came upstairs, and said: ‘you duckies, i’ll buy you chops if i go without a new hat,’ and nurse said she was an imperent jade, and we didn’t get ’ny chops, and somebody sent to uncle ronnie, and he came and gived money, and i told him of the scullery-maid, and he gived her half a sovereign, and said, ‘you’re a good girl,’ and that i heard, and we and the dogs and horses go down this afternoon.”
jack drew a long breath after his eloquence, and added, “harriet is gone down into essex to see her mother, who’s dyin’, or she’d have bought the chops.”
there were very few persons on the north side of the park, and they went on across the grass until they had got out of sight of the groom, and came up to an elm-tree with a circular bench round its roots.
“let’s sit down a moment, jack,” said harry. “it will be a long time perhaps before i see you again.”
“why?” said jack, in alarm. “are you going to ems?”
“no, dear—i am not going to ems,” said brancepeth sadly, looking down at the boy’s face, with the golden nimbus of its ruffled hair and the black circle of the sailor hat framing the hair as in an ebon frame. there was no one near.
the great elm trunk was behind them like a wall, and its branches above them like a roof.
how far away they seemed, those pleasant summers when, as the london season ended, he and she had planned their meetings at this bath or at the other, and cocky, pliant, philosophic cocky, had said always opportunely:[331] “you’ll come too, won’t you, harry? filthy feeding and beastly waters, but they set one on one’s legs again somehow or other.”
the distant sound of the traffic in the road beyond the railing was like the muttering of an angry but distant sea. a white butterfly floated above the heat-scorched turf. jack’s two little sunburnt hands were clasped on one of his own; he looked longingly and wistfully down on the child’s face and form as we look on what we cherish and may never see again.
“jack,” said brancepeth suddenly, “if you were never to see me any more after to-day would you remember me?”
jack’s face had on it the distressed perplexed wonder with which children feel their hearts stirred by appeals which they very dimly understand; his eyes were suffused, his forehead frowned. “of course i should,” he said almost crossly.
“really?” said brancepeth very wistfully.
“yes,” said jack very solemnly; then he burst out crying. “what do you say such things for?” he said between his sobs. “where’s you going?”
“you dear little beggar,” said harry, much moved himself, as he put his arm round the child’s shoulders and drew him closer. “i am not sure i’m going anywhere, but i may go a long way, and i mayn’t come back. don’t cry. listen. if you grow up without seeing me try and be a good man. not such a beast as men are nowadays. not such a fool as i am; a mere horse-riding, card-playing, dawdling, gaping, well-groomed tomfool. keep out of the accursed london life. don’t mind what women say. tell the truth. keep straight. live on your land, if any land’s left when you’re of age. there are a lot of things i want to say to you, but i don’t know how to say ’em, and you’re too little, you wouldn’t understand. but don’t do as i’ve done, that’s all; and make yourself as like your uncle ronnie as you can.”
