THAT evening, after Boy had gone to bed, Miss Leslie and the Major discussed the possibilities of his future with great and affectionate interest.
“Of course,” said Desmond, “it is a splendid chance for the boy,—but, Letty, that is just the very reason that I am afraid he will not be allowed to have it. The affairs of humanity are arranged in a very curiously jumbled-up fashion, and I have always found that when some specially good luck appears about to favour a deserving person, something unfavourable comes in the way and prevents him getting it. And Fortune frequently showers her choicest gifts on the most unworthy scoundrels, male and female, that burden this earth’s surface. It’s odd—it’s unfair, but it’s true.”
“Not always,” said Miss Leslie, gently. “You really must not get into the habit of looking on the worst side of life, Dick.”
“I won’t,” responded the Major promptly—“at least, not when you’re looking at me. Out of your sight I can do as I like!”
Miss Letty laughed. Then she returned to the chief subject of interest.
“You see,” she said, “it is not as if the D’Arcy-Muirs were rich and had plenty of opportunities for their son’s advance in life. They certainly have enough to live comfortably on, if they are frugal and careful, but the man is so incorrigible——”
“And the woman,” put in Major Desmond.
“Well, yes—she too is incorrigible in another way,—but after all slovenliness can scarcely be called a sin.”
“I think it can,” said the Major emphatically. “A slovenly woman is an eyesore and creates discord and discomfort by her very appearance. She is a walking offence. And when slovenliness is combined with obstinacy,—by Jove, Letty!—I tell you pigs going the wrong way home are easy driving compared to Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir!”
“Yes, I know!” and for a moment Miss Leslie’s even brows puckered in a little vexed line. “And her obstinacy is of such a strange kind,—all about the merest trifles! She argues on the question of a teacup or a duster to the extreme verge of silliness, but in important matters, such as the health or well-being of her husband—or of Boy—she lets everything go to pieces without a word of protest!”
“Delightful creature!” murmured the Major, sipping his glass of port wine with a relish: they were at dessert, and he was very comfortable,—pleased with the elegance of the table, which glistened with old silver, delicate glass, and tastefully arranged flowers,—and still more pleased with the grace and kindness of his gentle hostess,—“I remember her before Jim married her. A handsome large creature with a slow smile,—one of those smiles which begin in the exact middle of the lips, spread to the corners and gradually widen all over the face,—an indiarubber smile I call it,—but the men who took to her in her young days used to rave over her smile, and one idiot said she had ‘magnificent maternal brows like the Niobe in Florence.’ Good old Niobe! Yes, Letty,—there are a certain set of fellows who always lose their heads on large women,—the larger the better, give you my word! They never consider that the large girl will become a larger matron, and unless attacked by a wasting disease (which heaven forfend) will naturally grow larger every year. And I tell you, Letty, there is nothing in the world that kills a romantic passion so surely and hopelessly as Fat! Ah, you may laugh!—but it is a painful truth. Poetry—moonlight—music—kisses—all that pleasant stuff and nonsense melt before Fat. I have never met a man yet who was in love with a fat, really fat woman! And if a slim girl marries and gets fat in the years to come, her husband, poor chap, may deplore it,—deeply deplore it—but it’s very distressing—he cannot help it—his romance dies under it. Dies utterly! Ah! We’re weak creatures, we men, we cannot stand Fat. We like plumpness,—oh yes! We like round rosy curves and dimples, but not actual Fat. Now, Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir will become—indeed has become Fat.”
“Dear me!” and Miss Leslie laughed, “you really are quite eloquent, Dick! I never heard you go on in this way before. Poor Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir! She really has no alternative——”
“No alternative but to become Fat?” enquired the Major, solemnly glaring over his port wine.
“Now you know I don’t mean it in that way,” laughed Miss Leslie. “You really are incorrigible! What I wished to point out was, that when a woman finds that her husband doesn’t care a bit how she looks or what she wears, she is apt to become careless.”
“It doesn’t follow that because a man is a churl a woman should lose her self-respect,” said the Major. “Surely she should take a pride in being clean and looking as well as she can for her own sake. Then in this particular case there is Boy.”
“Yes—there is Boy,” agreed Miss Letty meditatively. “And he certainly does notice things.”
“Notice things? I should think he does! He is always noticing. He notices his mother’s untidiness, and he notices his father’s disgracefulness. If I were Jim D’Arcy-Muir I should be ashamed to meet that little chap’s eyes.”
“Do you think,” she asked after a pause, “they will let me have him?”
The Major considered,—and for some minutes sat twirling the ends of his white moustache reflectively.
“Well, to tell you the truth, Letty, I don’t,” he said at last,—“I don’t believe they will for a moment. Some parents would refuse your offer on account of their love and affection for the child, and their own natural desire not to part with him. That will not be the D’Arcy-Muirs’ reason. They will simply argue that you are trying to ‘patronise’ them. It will be exactly like their muddled minds to put it that way. They will say, ‘She thinks we are going to put our son under obligations to her for her money.’ And though they conduct themselves like pigs they think a great deal of themselves in a ‘county-family’ fashion. No, Letty—I’m afraid you won’t get a chance of doing any good in that quarter. But if you like I will take soundings—that is, I will suggest the idea of such a thing and see how they take it. What do you say?”
“Oh, I wish you would!” said Miss Letty earnestly. “You see you know Captain D’Arcy-Muir——”
“Well, in a way,—yes, I know him in a way,” corrected the Major; “I used to know him better than I do now. He was never in my regiment, thank the Lord! But I will try to get hold of him in a sober moment, and see what can be done. But I don’t give out any hopes of him.”
“Oh, Dick!” sighed Miss Letty.
“Well, I shall be very sorry for your disappointment, Letty,—very sorry—and sorrier still for the little chap, for I think his life literally hangs on the balance of this chance. If he is not allowed to take it, all the worse for him,—he will come to no good, I fear.”
“Don’t say that!” pleaded Miss Leslie, with pain in her voice; “don’t say that!”
“All right, I won’t say it,” said the Major, expressing however in his face and tone of voice that he would probably think it all the same. “But the world is a bad place to fight in if you are not thoroughly well equipped for the battle. God made the world, so we are told, but I doubt whether He wished it to be quite as overcrowded as it is just now. All the professions—all the trades—all the arts—overdone! Army no go,—Navy no go. If you are a soldier and get any chance of facing fire, you know just what your reward is likely to be, unless you are a Kitchener. You may get a V.C., and after that the workhouse, like some of the Crimean heroes. And in the Navy you get literally nothing but very poor pay. The best thing for a man now is to be an explorer, and even when you are that, the world cannot be persuaded to believe that you have explored anything, or been anywhere. You have simply been sitting at home and reading up!” He laughed, and then went on, “If you get Boy what are you going to do with him?”
“I shall see what he likes to do best himself,” said Letty.
“At present he likes to hug you and see ‘pick-shures’ of heavenly places,” said the Major. “That’s a bad sign, Letty! Woman and Art spells ruin like theatrical speculation! Well! Come and have a game of chess with me before I go home to my lonely bachelor rooms;—it is really too bad of you to make a sour old man of me in this way!”
Miss Leslie laughed heartily.
“No one will ever call you a sour old man, Dick,” she said as she rose from the table. “You are the most genial and generous-hearted fellow I know.”
“Then why won’t you have me?” pleaded Desmond.
“Oh, you know why,” said Letty. “What is the use of going over it all again?”
“Going over it all—yes—I know!” said the Major dismally. “You have got it into your head that if you were to marry me, and that then afterwards we died—as we shall do—and went to Heaven—which is a question—you would find your Harry up there in the shape of a stern reproving angel, ready to scold you for having a little happiness and sympathy on earth when he was not there. Now, if things are to be arranged in that way, some folks will be in awful trouble. The ladies who have had several husbands,—the husbands who have had several wives,—stern reproving angels all round,—good gracious! What a row there will be! Fact is fact, Letty,—there cannot possibly be peace in Heaven under such circumstances!”
“Do stop talking such nonsense,” said Miss Leslie, still laughing. “Really I begin to wish you had gone abroad after all!”
“No, you don’t,” said Dick confidently, as he followed her into the drawing-room. “You are pleased to see me, you know you are! Hullo! Here’s Margaret. What’s up? Something wrong with Boy?”
“Oh no, sir,” said Margaret, who had just entered the room; “but I thought perhaps Miss Leslie would like to see him asleep. He is just the bonniest wee bairnie!”
“Oh, I must go and look at him!” said Miss Letty eagerly. “Will you come too, Dick?”
The Major assented with alacrity, and they followed Margaret upstairs, treading softly and on tiptoe as they entered the pretty airy room selected for Boy’s slumbers. It was a large room, and one corner of it was occupied by the big bed allotted to Margaret. In an arched recess, draped with white muslin, was a smaller and daintier couch,—and here Boy lay in his first sleep, his fair curls tossed on the pillow, his round soft face rosy with warmth and health, his pretty mouth slightly parted in a smile. Miss Leslie bent over him tenderly and kissed his forehead,—Major Desmond looked on in contemplative and somewhat awed silence. Presently he noticed a piece of string tied to the little fellow’s wrist. Pointing to it he whispered solemnly,
“What’s that?”
Margaret smiled.
“Oh, he just begged me to get him a bit of string,” she said. “He said he always had to fasten his Cow up at night lest it should run away!” Margaret laughed. “Bless the wee lad! And there you see is the Cow at the foot of the bed, and he has tied it to the string in that way himself!”
“Good gracious me!” said the Major, staring, “I never heard of such a thing in my life! And the Cow can’t run away! Lucky Cow!”
Boy stirred in his sleep and smiled. A slight movement of the chubby wrist to which the beloved “Dunny” was tied caused it to wag its movable head automatically, and for a moment it looked quite a sentient thing nodding wisely over unexpressed and inexpressible pastoral problems.
“Come away,” then said Miss Letty gently. “We shall wake him if we remain any longer.”
“Yes,” said the Major dreamily, “we shall wake him! And then the Cow might bolt, or take to tossing somebody on its horns, which would be very alarming! God bless my soul! What a little chap it is! Beginning to look after a cow at his time of life!—a budding farmer, upon my word! Letty, Australia is the place for him,—a wild prairie and cattle, you know,—he is evidently a born rancher!”
Letty laughed, and they left the room together. Margaret watched them as they went downstairs, and gave a little regretful sigh.
“Poor dear Miss Letty!” she thought. “The sweetest lady that ever lived, and no man has ever been wise enough to find it out and marry her.”
She bent over Boy’s bed and carefully adjusted the coverlet to keep him warm, then lowering the light, left him sleeping peacefully with “Dunny” on guard.