Chapter IV (1)

It was dusk when he wakened. Lady Aileen’s callers had departed some time ago, and Lady Aileen herself had departed to take a twilight drive, which was a thing she was fond of doing. The servants were enjoying themselves in their own fashion in the kitchen, and all the house seemed very quiet.

It seemed so still to Piccino when he slipped off his chair and stood on his feet rubbing his eyes, that for a moment he felt a little frightened. He was so accustomed to living in a hovel crowded with children and only partitioned off from the donkey, that Lady Aileen’s villa seemed enormous to him. It was not enormous, but it seemed so. He looked round him and listened.

“Nobody is here!” he said. “Everybody has gone away. Nicola has gone away.”

He certainly did not want Nicholson, but his sense of desolation overwhelmed him.

And then, as he stood there, there came a sound which seemed to alter everything. It came through the window, which was open, and which he ran towards at once. It was the voice of the friend who had come to him the night before—the dog who lived in the fine kennel at the gate, and wanted human things so much, and was so unhappy.

Piccino listened to him a moment, and his breath began to come quickly. He turned round and went to the door. It was not locked—Nicholson had not thought of that. It was easy enough to open, and when he had opened it he made his way quickly towards the stairs.

He did not go out at the big front door at which he had been brought in. That was shut, and he knew he was too little to open it, but he remembered the side entrance into the garden, out of which he had slipped when he went to the girl who looked like Maria. He found it again and passed through it, and was out among the flowers in a moment, running quickly down the broad drive to the gate.

How the dog jumped and yelped and covered him with caresses when he reached the kennel! He knew his small bed-fellow again well enough. Perhaps, too, he liked the fragrance of the garlic, which was still as perceptible as ever. The two embraced and rubbed against each other, and tumbled affectionately about, until Piccino was quite dirty enough for the bathtub again. But there was to be no more bathtub if he could help it. He wanted the dog to come with him, though, and help him to find his way; and he fumbled and struggled with the chain and collar until his friend was loose, and, finding that nothing held him, began to race up and down in breathless rapture and run in circles, darting like a wild thing.

“Come,” said Piccino, “come with me. I am going home.”

He did not realize the number of chances there might be that he would be caught and carried back into bondage. He was not old enough to think much of that, but he just knew enough to teach him that it was best to keep in the shade when he saw any one coming. He trudged along, keeping under trees and near walls, and he was clever enough to do it until he turned off the highway which led through the city. He passed by houses and shops and villas and gardens, but at last he turned into the road which sloped up among the olive vineyards, into the hills. Then he felt that he was at home. He did not know that he was still miles and miles away from Ceriani; he only knew that the big trees and the little ones were familiar things, that when he lifted his face he could see the sky he knew so well, and that the wind that blew softly up from the sea among his curls was something he seemed to have been far away from during these last strange two days. These things made him feel that Ceriani must be near.

He was used to running about and being on his legs all day, or he would have been tired out long before he was. When he did begin to be tired he sat down on the grass, and the dog sat with him. In their own way they talked to each other. Then they would get up and trudge on.

They had rested and trudged on many times before he began to be really discouraged. But his legs were so short, and in time he began to feel as if Ceriani was too far away! Stars were beginning to come out, and he suddenly realized that he was very little, and it had taken the big carriages of the _forestieri_ quite a long time to return to San Remo after their picnic. He sat down suddenly and began to cry.

“We can’t find it!” he said to the dog. “We can’t find it!”

The dog looked very much grieved. It is probable that he knew quite well what Piccino said. He shook his head until his ears made a flapping noise. Then he pushed close to Piccino and kissed him, lapping the salt tears off his soft cheeks as they rolled down. He knew he could have found the place all by himself, and got there without any particular trouble, but he could not leave his friend, and such a little friend, too, by the roadside. So he pressed close to him and looked sympathetic, and kissed his tears off cheeringly.

“We can’t find it!” wailed Piccino. “Maria! Maria! Maria! Ma-ri-a!”

Up the curve of the road below there toiled a donkey dragging a cart. It was one of the little peasant carts, floored with a lattice-work of ropes, and there were three people in it. They were a boy and two very young men. They had been to a _festa_, and the boy was fast asleep, and the two young men were in very good spirits. They had been dancing and enjoying themselves, and had had so much wine that they were not quite sure of what they were doing. They alternately sang songs and made jokes and laughed at each other. One of the favorite jokes was about a pretty peasant girl they had both been dancing with, and as it chanced, her name was Maria. After a good deal of such joking they had both been silent for a while, being a little stupid with the wine they had had, and quieted a little by the motion of the cart as the donkey jogged along with it. It was very peaceful in this place, with the gentle wind from the sea, and the occasional rustle of the olives, and the stars shining sweetly above the many shadows.

“What are you thinking of, Pietro?” said one to the other at last, with a little laugh.

“Maria! Maria! Ma-ri-a!” wailed Piccino, a few hundred feet above them.

They both burst out laughing at once.

“Of Maria! Maria!” said Alessandro. “The very trees call out to you!” And they found this such a beautiful joke that they laughed until the very donkey was afraid they would roll off the cart.

By the time they stopped they were close to Piccino, and, whether because she wanted a rest or from some queer instinct, the donkey stopped too.

“Maria!” cried Piccino. “_Voglio andare a casa! Voglio an-dar-e!_”

“It is a child,” said Pietro. “It is lost!” They had had wine enough to be good-natured, and ready for any adventure. Pietro got out of the cart and rather unsteadily went to the side of the road, where Piccino sat crying with his dog.

“Who are you?” he said, “and what are you doing here?”

Piccino answered him with sobs. He was not so clear as he thought he was, and Pietro and Alessandro laughed a good deal. They thought he was a great joke—all the more when they saw how he was dressed. Their heads were not clear enough to permit them to quite understand what was meant by the childish rambling and disconnected story about the _forestieri_ and the water and Nicola and the donkey, but they found out that somehow the young one lived near Ceriani and wanted to get home to Maria. They themselves lived not far from Ceriani, and if they had been quite sober might have put this and that together and guessed something of the truth; but as it was, it happened to seem enough of a joke for them to be inclined to carry it out.

“Let us take him in the cart as far as we go,” said Alessandro. “He can find his way home after we leave him. Perhaps he will talk to us about his Maria. She may be prettier than the other one.” And so he was lifted into the cart, and the dog trotted joyfully by the donkey’s side. The two probably talked to each other confidentially, and everything was explained between them as far as the dog could explain it. At all events, he could explain the loneliness of living in a kennel with a chain round your neck, and grand people passing you, laughing and talking, and taking no notice, however much you jumped and whined and begged to have a pat and a word, and not seeing that you loved everybody.

Piccino sat in the cart and leaned against Pietro or the boy, and enjoyed himself. He answered questions about Maria, and did not know why his rescuers laughed at everything he said. Maria seemed a very mature person to him, and he did not know that the young men’s impression that she was a pretty young woman was not the correct one. Pietro had some good things he had brought from the _festa_ in a paper, and he gave him some. That he was such a pretty, soft, rabbit-like little thing, made things pleasant for him even when he was picked up from the roadside by two young peasants full of cheap wine. They laughed at his disconnected babbling, and thought him great fun, and when he was sleepy let him cuddle down and be comfortable.

He was very fast asleep when they wakened him, having reached the end of their journey.

“Here!” they said, shaking him good-naturedly enough, “you can find your way to Maria now.”

He stood unsteadily in the road where Pietro put him, rubbing his eyes, and feeling the dog greeting him again by jumping at him and kissing him.

“Where is Maria?” he said, sleepily.

Pietro and Alessandro were sleepy too by this time; they had almost had time to forget him while he was asleep.

“Go on and you will find her,” they said. “Ceriani is near here.”

When he saw the donkey led away Piccino was on the point of crying because he was to be left, but before he quite began he saw by the light of the moon, which had risen since he fell asleep, a familiar tree—a big-twisted and huge-trunked olive he had sat under many a time when he had strayed down the road with Maria. It made his heart begin to beat fast and his rising tears dry in their fountain. It was true! He was near Ceriani! He was near home! He could find it! He began to run as fast as his short legs could carry him. The white villa and the grand _signori_ who had joked about him all day, the bathtub and Nicola and the dreadful _pasta_, seemed as far away now as Ceriani and the donkey had been this morning. The tears that had dried for joy suddenly began to rise again for joy. He did not know anything about it himself, but it was joy which made him begin to choke—this beautiful little savage peasant who had been taken away to a world so much too grand for him.

He ran and ran, and at every yard he saw something that he knew, and felt that he loved it because he knew it. The late moon shone down on him, a little white figure running eagerly; the trees rustled as he passed.

“Maria! Maria!” he said, but he did not say it loud, but softly.

And at last he had reached it—his own dear hovel which he seemed to have left a thousand years ago. He stood and beat on the door with his little soft fists.

“Maria! Maria!” he said, “open the door! I have come home. Let me in!”

But inside they slept the heavy sleep of wornout peasants and of tired childhood. They could not have heard him even if he had been able to make more noise. His child hands could make very little. They slept so heavily that he could hear them.

And there he stood in the moonlight, thumping on the old door, unanswered. And the dog stood by him, wagging his tail and looking up at him with such a companionable air that he could not feel he was alone, and actually did not begin to cry. At all events he had got home, and was among the hills again, with the trees growing close around him, and Maria and the donkey.

His whimper lost itself in a sudden sense of relief. Yes, there was the donkey in her stable, and the door would keep nobody out.

“The donkey will let us in,” he said to the dog. “Let us go in there.”

And a few moments later the donkey was roused from her sleep by something soft stumbling against her as she lay down, and, being a donkey with a memory, she realized that a familiar friend had come to her at this untimely hour, and she knew the little voice that spoke, and the little body which cuddled against her side as if she were a pillow, and being also affectionate and maternal, she did not resent the intrusion by any unfriendly moving.

And in the early, early morning, when Rita opened the stable door and let in a shaft of the gold sunlight which was lighting up the darkness of the olive-trees, the first thing it shone upon was the beautiful, tired little travel-stained figure of Piccino, who lay fast asleep against the donkey’s gray side, his arms around her neck, and the dog’s body pressed close and lovingly against his own.

* * * * *

Upon the whole, Lady Aileen was not very much surprised and not at all disturbed when it was found that he was gone. She sent some one to Ceriani, and when the news was brought back to her that he was discovered there, she only laughed a little. In fact, she had found it too tiresome an amusement to undertake the management of a lovely little wild animal, to whom civilization only represented horror and dismay. She sent Rita some money—not too much, but enough to make her feel quite rich for a few weeks. For the rest, she only remembered Piccino as part of an anecdote it was rather amusing to tell to those of her friends in London who were entertained by anecdotes.

“He thought we were savages or mad,” she used to say. “I think he might have borne anything, perhaps, but the bathtub. He said that we ‘put him in water!’”

THE CAPTAIN’S YOUNGEST

THE CAPTAIN’S YOUNGEST

There never were another like him, that’s certain. I’ve seen a good many young gentlemen in my day, being in the army, and under officers as was what you may call swells, and had families of their own, some of them, but I never saw a young gentleman as could hold a candle to Master Lionel; no, nor as were fit to black his boots, for the matter of that. And I knew him, too, from the time he were a young gentleman in long clothes, being carried about in his ayah’s arms, and many’s the time I’ve carried him myself, and been proud to do it. I had no children of my own, though I’d always been taken with them. I wasn’t a married man, and knew I never should be, for that matter, after curly-headed little Maggie Shea died of the fever that blazing hot year when the disease was like a plague among us. She’d given me her promise only a week before; and I never saw the woman I wanted after her. Sometimes I’ve thought I was fonder of the children because of it. She had been fond of them, and like a little mother she was to the seven that were sisters and brothers to her. And there was a sort of reason Master Lionel was more to me than the rest. I’d known his father, Captain Dalgetty, in his best days, when he first came out to India with his regiment at the time of the Mutiny, and won such a name by his dare-devil bravery and determination. That was before he offended his crusty old father by marrying pretty Miss Rosie Terence, the drunken old Irish major’s daughter, who had nothing to her fortune but her dimples and her big blue eyes and black lashes, except the coaxing ways that drove the whole station wild with love for her. It _were_ said as Miss Rosie’s mother sent her out to her father to make a match, but if she did the old lady must have been terribly disappointed, because no sooner did the captain’s father hear of the marriage than he sent for his lawyer, and sat down then and there and made a will cutting the poor fellow off with a shilling, and leaving all his money to hospitals and churches.

So the captain and Miss Rosie began life on love and short commons; and, neither of them understanding economy, made a good many mistakes, as might have been expected. They didn’t know how to contrive, and they got into debt, and when the children came and expenses grew heavier they lost spirit and patience, like a good many more, and let things go their own way. The captain lost his temper and the mistress grew careless and fretted, and when the young master was born—the one as I’m telling about—things were about as bad and as comfortless as they could be. Not wishing to say a disrespectful word, or a harmful one, I _must_ say as I’d even thought the captain were getting tired of his love-match, for he was aging uncommon fast and his temper was getting uncommon sharp, and now and then Mrs. Dalgetty and him would have words, as would end in him striding out of the bungalow, leaving her crying and worriting among the children. I can’t say even as he were over fond of the children, or that they were over welcome when they came—six girls, one after another—though they were pretty little things, all of them. But when Master Lionel were born it struck me as he _were_ rather better pleased than he had been before, for he were the first boy.

Well I remember the day the captain came out of his quarters and told me about his having made his appearance rather unexpected.

I had been so long with them, and there were so many little things I could do as was a help, that I’d got into the way of doing them; and I happened this morning to be polishing about, and sees the captain coming out, looking half-way pleased with something or other; and when I drew myself up and saluted as usual, says he:

“Rabbett,” says he, “there’s a change in the programme this time.”

I drops my swab in a minute and draws up and salutes again.

“What, sir?” says I. “Boy, sir?”

“Yes,” says he. “Boy, and a fine little fellow too.”

So in the course of a week I smartens myself up a bit more than common, in honor of the occasion, and goes into the house and gets the ayah to let me have a look at the young gentleman as he lay in his cradle in the nursery, next to the mistress’s room. They was rather fond of me in that nursery, I may say, and it wasn’t the first time I’d been there by many a one. But though I stepped light enough for fear of wakening the little fellow, somehow or other he did waken that very minute. As I bent over his cradle he opens his eyes, and he actually stares at me as if he was asking me a question or so. At least it looked that way to me, and then, as sure as I’m a living man, he does something with his face as if he was doing his best to laugh; and when I laughs back and lifts his bit of a red hand, he opens it out and lets it lay on mine, quite friendly and sociable.

I won’t say as he knew what he were doing, but I will say as he looked as if he did. And from that minute to the last hour of his life Master Lionel and me was friends fast and firm. Not being a family man, as I have said before, I took to him all the more, and I’m happy to say he did the same by me. When he got big enough to be carried out by his ayah I used to meet the woman, and take him off her hands whenever she would let me; which was often enough, because she knew both the captain and Mrs. Dalgetty knew I was safe to trust. I’d take him off into the shade and walk about with him—him a-layin’ his cheek against my red coat, sometimes laughing at the jokes I’d make with him, suiting them to his size, and sometimes a-staring up at me serious, but both of us always understanding each other and being cheerful, whatever was a-goin’ on betwixt us. The fact was that I got that there used to him, with nursing him so much, that when he’d have a little choke or a disturbance of any kind, I got to be as handy as a woman about settling him and turning him over and patting his back, and though it may sound like a exaggeration to outsiders, I must say as I saw clear enough he had his own way of thanking me and showing me his gratitude for any small favors of the kind. Ay, and many an hour I’ve thought how it might have been if little Maggie Shea had got through that blazing summer—many and many an hour as I walked up and down, him nestling up against me as my own flesh and blood might have done, but never would.

So we began by being fond of one another, and we keeps on a-bein’ fond of one another, and what’s more, we gets fonder and fonder of each other as we grows older.

And such a boy as he were, and such ways as he had! There weren’t no end to him, he were that manly and handsome and well-grown and ready, by the time he were seven or eight year old. People as never looked at a child looked at him and was took by him, and the ladies at the station run wild about his beauty. Tall he was and well set up, and with a way of carrying himself a brigadier-general might have been proud of. And a fine-cut face, and a big, brave black eye as looked at a man as if he was equal to leading a regiment; and yet was thoughtful and loving, and had a softness, too, when he was talking to a friend. And that quick he were to notice things as others of his age would never have seen. Why, he was only six years when one day, as he was standing by watching me at work, he looks up at me all at once and says he:

“Rabbett,” he says, “my mamma is very pretty, isn’t she?”

“Well,” says I, “Master Lionel, I should say she _were_!”

“I thought so,” he says; “I thought everybody must think she was pretty, just as I do, only I am very fond of her, you see.” And he rather puzzles me by looking at me again in a wistful, questioning sort of way.

“Just so, Master Lionel,” I answers, “just so, sir.”

“Yes,” he goes on, “I am very fond of her, and—and I suppose my papa is very fond of her, too.”

Being a trifle upset by this, I polished away at the captain’s sabre for a minute or so, and even then I could only say:

“Yes, sir; nat’rally, sir, of course.” For the truth were as things had been getting worse and worse, and the tiffs had been growing into rows—rows as couldn’t go on without being heard in a bungalow, where walls was thin and rooms not over far from each other. And what he had heard the Lord only knows, but it had been a-workin’ in his innercent mind and troubling him, and he was coming to me for comfort, and that I saw in his fine, loving, wistful black eye, and in his handsome little chin, as was not quite steady.

“Yes, of course, he is very fond of her,” he said, “and she is very fond of him; because people who are married—people who are married always are, aren’t they, Rabbett?”

“Ah, sir,” says I, “that they are; there ain’t nothin’ like it.”

“No,” he says, his little face trying to keep itself steady, “and I’m very glad of—of that—I’m very glad of that.” And quite sudden he faces round and walks off, a-holding his head up like a field officer. But well I knowed why he’d gone. Something had hurt his little heart and set him to thinking, so that he could not manage his looks even before Rabbett. And, gentleman as he was, he was not willing to let it be known what his child’s trouble was.

When the family began to grow up the regiment was ordered back to England; and I came back with them, you see. The captain was not rich, and as the family expenses got bigger, year by year, money got scarcer with him, and they couldn’t live as they did before; and so, somehow—I think it was because I liked the children, and especially my young master—I fell into a way of being part valet, part waiter, part man-of-all-work for the captain and his.

That wasn’t all. The captain’s fine way—for he was handsome still, and a gentleman born, and no mistake—brought him fine friends; and his fine friends brought him debt, because he was obliged to keep up with them. Everything was badly managed, because Mrs. Dalgetty, as I said, knew nothing about managing; so the servants ran wild, and were nothing but trouble and expense, and there were nothing but struggling to keep up, and threatening to break down, from day to day.

“The captain is worse than ever,” Mrs. Dalgetty would say, sometimes, when things looked bad, and she had a crying fit on. “And Rose is so expensive, and the other girls are growing up. I wish Lionel was older. He is the only one who seems to feel for me at all.”

The real truth were, as Lionel were that sweet-natured he felt for them all; and I must say as they couldn’t help being as fond of him in their way as he was of them in his.

“Rabbett,” says he to me once, when they was all going out—he was about nine years old then, or thereabout—“Rabbett, if you would like to see Rose before she goes, just stand in the passage, when I go into the drawing-room with her cloak and handkerchief. She has just sent me for them.”

Now my young master loved his mother dearly, but he loved Rose even better; he was allers talking to me of her beauty.

So says I, “I would like to see her.” And he runs up-stairs, quite pleased, and is down again in a minute.

“I’ll leave the door open,” he says. And in he goes, with the cloak over his arm, and does leave it open, quite wide enough for me to see through.

Miss Rose was standing by the fire, and beautiful she looked, in her grand evening dress, and so like what her mother had been that it gave me quite a start. There was a gentleman at her side, a-laughing and talking to her, and when Master Lionel goes in this party turns toward the door, to look at him, and I sees his face, and I gives a start again, for it were Captain Basil Roscoe.

Now I knew sum’at of Captain Basil Roscoe, you see, and that’s what made me give a start. If ever there was a villain, and he to be called a gentleman, Captain Basil Roscoe were one. I knew things of him that he little guessed; we servants get to know many queer things. I felt, when I sees him, as if I saw a snake.

“Here comes the wrap,” says Captain Basil, and he held out his hand, as if he meant to put it on for himself, but Miss Rose laughs and stops him.

“No,” says she. “Lionel wouldn’t like that. Would you, Lionel? He always puts my cloak on for me.”

The captain drew back a bit, and gave the boy a sharp glance, but Miss Rose did not see it, for she was bending down to have the cloak put over her white shoulders, and Master Lionel was a-folding it around her, as pleased as could be, laughing, too, boy-like, but, for all that, doing it as deft and graceful as if he’d been born to it.

And then, when it was done, Miss Rose put her little hands on the shoulders of his jacket, and kissed him half-a-dozen times, so coaxing and merry and happy that I could not bear to think the time would ever come when life would look harder to her than it did just then—going out to a grand ball, in a pretty dress, and with her lover by her side.

Unless it is true that the devil shrinks from and hates them as has no sins of their own, I should like to know why it was that Basil Roscoe were so ready in taking a dislike to a innocent-faced boy, as never harmed or differed with him; for nothing is more certain than that from the first he did take a dislike to Master Lionel. It struck me, once or twice, as he not only couldn’t bear the sight of him, but that, if he had had the chance, he would not have been sorry to do him a harm. His sneering manner showed it, and his ill-looking, handsome face showed it, apart from a hundred other bits of things. Master Lionel himself found it out soon enough.

“Rabbett,” says he, private and confidential, “he doesn’t like me and I don’t like him, and I wish he wasn’t so fond of Rose. I never did him any harm, you know, Rabbett.”

Natural enough, his spirit is hurt about it, and he takes it a bit hard. But he never says much about it, until one night he comes to me, and I sees he is wonderful quiet, and after a while I made bold to ask what ails him. And the minute I asks him I sees, by the look in his eyes, that what ails him is something uncommon.

“It’s something about Rose,” he says, “and it’s something about Captain Roscoe.”

A slight huskiness comes in my throat, as makes it necessary for me to clear it.

“Oh!” I says. “Indeed, sir?”

“Yes,” he answers. “As I was coming here I passed him, standing at the corner of the street with a gentleman, and they were both talking aloud, Rabbett, and laughing. And they were talking about Rose.”

Knowing the man so well, and having heard so much of his villany, my blood fairly boiled at the thought of what he might have been saying; but I made up my mind to speak quietly.

“Did you hear what they said, sir?” I asked. “Are you sure it was her they were speaking of?”

“Yes,” says he, “sure, for I heard the gentleman say, ‘What? Pretty Rose Dalgetty?’ And then Roscoe answered, ‘Even she might get tiresome.’ And they both laughed. Rabbett”—and he turned his troubled, questioning boy’s face to me, as if he was just awakening to some sort of bewildered fear, and wanted help—“what did he mean when he said she might get tiresome? And what made them laugh as they did? They were laughing at her—my sister Rose.”

“No gentleman would have done it, sir,” I answered, not knowing what else to say.

“I know that,” he says. “But what did they mean? You are older than me, Rabbett, and perhaps you can understand more than that it was not what a gentleman would have done.”

But of course I could not tell him that. If it meant nothing worse, it at least did mean as Miss Rose’s lover had so little respect for her that he could bandy her name among his companions with something like a sneer; so I tried my best to lead him away from the subject. If he’d been an ordinary kind of young gentleman, and he so very young yet, I might have managed it; but being the little fellow he was, the suspicion that his sister had been somewhat slighted stuck to him, and settled itself deep in his mind, and made him thoughtful beyond his years.

And this was far from being the end of it. Little by little I began to hear a whisper here and there, even among the men, about what people said of Captain Roscoe being so friendly with the Dalgettys, and partic’ler with Miss Rosie. There was not one of them but said that it would do the pretty young creature no good, if it did her no harm, to be so ready to let him be attentive. He had been such an open rascal in his time, and his character was so well known, that no careful mother would have let her daughter be seen with him, and he was only tolerated in his own set, and among those who were as bad as himself. But Mrs. Dalgetty was too thoughtless and indifferent to see the wrong in him, or to be troubled by what she heard, and the captain was rarely at home; so Miss Rose was left to herself, and, of course, did as any other innocent girl would have done, fell in love with a handsome face, and believed in it.

But at last so much was said by outsiders that something came to the captain’s ears as must have roused him, for one evening he comes up to the house in a towering rage, and shuts himself up with Miss Rose and her mother in the parlor, and has a tremendous row, and makes them both cry, and ends up by forbidding them to speak to Roscoe again.

But though Mrs. Dalgetty gave in, as she always did when the captain gave his orders, of course Miss Rose would not believe anything against her lover. Things had gone so far by that time that she would have stood out for him against the whole world; and as she dared not openly disobey her father, she fretted until she lost her pretty color and bright spirits, and went about the house looking ill and wretched.

But the matter was not put an end to, as you may imagine. Once or twice, in going from the house to the barracks, I found Captain Basil Roscoe loitering about not far from the street’s end, and more than once I could have sworn that I passed him at dusk with a familiar little figure clinging to his arm. And one night Miss Rosie calls her brother to her, as he was going out on an errand, and, as she bends over him in the doorway, slips a note into his hand, crying pitifully.

“You will take that for me, won’t you, dear?” she says. “He is waiting in the square for it, and he does want it so—so much.” And she kisses him, and gives a little sob and runs up-stairs.

I don’t think it could have been more than three minutes after that when he comes to me, all pale and breathless with running, and lays that there note on the table.

“She wants me to take it to him, Rabbett,” he says, “and she was crying when she asked me, and—what must we do?”

It is not to be expected as we two hadn’t talked things over, being the friends we were. I got up and took the note from the table, making a resolution all of a sudden.

“If you’ll stay here, sir,” I said, “I’ll take it myself.” And take it I did, and found the rascal waiting, as Miss Rose had said he would be. He gave a black enough scowl when he saw it were me, and it certainly didn’t die out when I spoke to him.

“Sir,” says I, “I’ve come here on a poor errand, and I’ve come unwilling enough, God knows. I’ve got a note in my hand here—a pitiful little letter from a trusting, innocent girl to a man who, if he does not mean her harm, surely cannot mean her good, or he would not be leading her to meet him, and write to him in underhand ways. And I’ve been making up my mind, as I came along, to make a appeal to that man, as surely he’ll listen to if he has a man’s heart in his breast. She is scarcely more than a child, sir, and she knows nothing of the world. Leave her alone, and she may be a happy woman; go on as you’ve begun, and it will be death and heartbreak to her, and her wrongs will lie at your door.”

He stands there and looks at me, and by the light of the lamp we was standing under I sees his handsome, devilish face, sneering and triumphing and scorning me, as if I was a worm in the dirt under his feet.

“My good fellow,” he says, “you are a little too late. Hand me that letter, and be off, before I find it necessary to help you. How you got hold of the note I don’t know, but I _do_ know it was never given to you to deliver, and that I should be well warranted in kicking you back to your quarters, for your deuced impudence and presumption.”

But I held to the letter tight.

“Very well, sir,” I answers, respectful, but firm as a rock. “This letter goes back to the house, and before night is over the captain will have read it himself, and can judge for himself what is best——”

I didn’t finish, for the next thing I knew was that he strode up to me and grasped hold of me by my collar, and the minute I saw what he meant to do I felt I had made a mistake in bringing the letter at all, and in fancying that any appeal could touch or move him. There was a struggle between us, but it did not last long; he being strong and lithe, and so much the younger man, gave me no chance; and it were scarcely three seconds before he threw me on the pavement, and leaving me there, a trifle stunned, walked off with the letter in his hand.

I knew things must be pretty bad then. He would never have been so desperate and determined if he had not meant to do his worst, and when I made my way back I felt sick with fear. Master Lionel was sitting by the bit of fire in the grate when I opened the door, and he turns round and looks at me, and changes color.

“Rabbett,” he says, “there is blood on your face.”

“Perhaps so, sir,” I says. “I’ve had a fall.”

And then I sits down and tells him all about it; about what I had meant to do, and what I had done, and I ends up by asking him what he thinks we had better do, now that my plans had failed.

“Master Lionel,” I says, “it would seem a dreadful hard sort of thing to do, if we spoke to the captain.”

He turns quite pale at the thought of it.

“Oh, no,” he says, “Rabbett, I wouldn’t do it. He would be so angry with Rose, and even with mamma. You remember my telling you what he said before.”

I remembered well enough, and a pretty hard thing it was to say, even if it had been said in a passion, and not half meant. He had threatened to turn Miss Rose out of doors if she spoke to Roscoe again. He must have heard something bad enough, to have been so roused.

“Well,” I ventures, “what can we do, sir?”

“Watch,” says he. “I can think of nothing else to do just yet, Rabbett. I will watch Rose, and you shall watch Roscoe; and if the worst comes, and we must tell papa, we must. I suppose, Rabbett, that Roscoe will try to run away with Rose, as Farquhar ran away with that pretty Miss Lewis?”

“Yes, sir,” I answers, “I’m afraid he will. But he is a worse man than Farquhar; and if Miss Rose goes away with him, I’m afraid he’ll treat her hard enough when he tires of her, as such men as him always tires of young ladies.”

“It would be better, Rabbett,” says he, fixing his dark eyes solemnly on the fire, “it would be better that Rose should die. I know that.”

“I am afeard, sir,” says I, “that you are right.”

God knows how he had learned to understand, but understand he did, and he were that sad and wise about it that my very heart ached. He had seen an old enough side of life, had Master Lionel, living among the set he did, but he were a young gentleman as nothing could spoil, his nature were that fine-grained.

We kept our watch faithful all that week and part of the next, but we found out very little, though we had our suspicions, Master Lionel and me, as things were going on pretty badly in a secret way. But at last the very worst thing as could have happened burst upon us all at once.

I was up at the house one evening, doing something or other for Mrs. Dalgetty, when of a sudden I heard a tremendous loud ring at the doorbell; and, going in a hurry to answer it, the captain himself strode past me into the hall, all in a flame with the wine he had been drinking and the passion he were in. I had seen him in towering enough tempers often before, but I had never seen him look as he did then. It was my impression he were pretty near mad; indeed, I thought so then, and have thought so since. How could he have done what he did that night, unless he had not been quite himself?

“Rabbett,” says he, “where’s Miss Rose?”

“In her own room, sir,” says I, wishing with all my heart that I could have told him she were not in.

“Rabbett,” says he, “where’s Mrs. Dalgetty?”

“In _her_ own room,” says I, “lying down, a-trying to get rid of a headache.”

“Then,” says he, “go and tell Miss Rose to come down to me at once.”

I think I must have looked upset, myself, when I knocked at Miss Rose’s door to deliver the captain’s message, for the minute the words were out of my mouth she turned quite pale and scared-looking, and began to tremble.

“Oh, Rabbett,” she says, the tears coming into her great, pretty dark eyes, “is anything the matter? does he look angry?”

“I must say, miss,” I answers, “as he seems a bit more pepperyer than common, but I hope it’s nothing much.”

“Oh, Rabbett,” she says, beginning to cry, and wringing her poor little helpless hands, “I know it is something dreadful. I daren’t go down. I am so frightened.”

But she were obliged to go down, and go down she did, a-trembling all over, and out-and-out faint with fear. She had always been a timid little affectionate creature, and the captain were pretty hard to face when his temper were up.

I am not ashamed to confess as I stayed as near within hearing distance as I could, without positively eavesdropping. I own up as I had my fears as to what the end of it all would be, knowing the captain were drove too wild to be wise, or even reasonable, and I wanted to be near enough to see Miss Rose when she came out of the room, and say a comforting word to her, if she seemed to need one.

But she came out of the room in a different manner to what even I had expected. The minute she went in I heard the sound of Mrs. Dalgetty crying and the captain storming, and for a quarter of an hour after the storm fairly raged. The captain stamped and swore, Mrs. Dalgetty sobbed, and tried to put in a word now and then, but Miss Rose seemed to be too much stunned to speak. I never heard her voice after the first few moments, and at last the door opened again, and she came running out, her beautiful dark eyes wide open, her innocent face as white as death. She did not see me, but ran past where I stood, up to her own bedroom, and there was that in her look as brought my heart into my mouth, and, queer as it may seem to you, the first thing I thought of was Master Lionel.

“There’s harm been done,” says I to myself, “deadly harm, and no one can undo it but one as loves her, and that she’s fond of herself in her girl’s way; the one as she needs now is that there fine little fellow as was almost like a little lover to her.”

And when she came down I feels surer of it than ever; for in three minutes more she did come down, with her hat and jacket on, ready to go out. And her face was even whiter than before; and when she sees me she holds out her hand, her eyes looking big and bright with a dangerous sort of shine.

“Good-by, Rabbett,” she says. “I am going.”

“Miss Rose,” says I, “where are you going to?”

Then she smiles sad and bitter, and a bit hard.

“Ask papa,” she answers. “He ought to know. He sent me away. I don’t exactly know myself, unless—unless one person in the world loves me well enough to take me.”

“Miss Rose,” I breaks out, “for God’s sake don’t go to Basil Roscoe!”

She dragged her hand away from mine, and her eyes flashed fire.

“You all hate him!” she cried; “but I have chosen him before all the world. Papa said I must choose, and I have chosen. I am going to Basil Roscoe!”

And before I could speak another word she had darted out of the door, all on fire, and desperate, as one might say, and was gone.

I knew it would be of no use speaking to the captain. Since he had as good as turned the poor innocent creature out of house and home, he was not the one to go to for help. When he was cooler he would see his mistake, and repent it bitter enough; but just now to go to him would only make him madder than ever.

Well, just at that very minute in come Master Lionel. There might have been some sort of a fate in it. He jumps up them stone steps, two at a time, and bangs at that open front door, clean out of breath, and looking wonderful like his sister, in his excitement.

“Where’s Rose gone to, Rabbett?” he says. “I have just seen her walking fast—almost running—down the street, and she would not stop for me. What has been the matter?”

I ups and tells him. I weren’t afeard of doing it. I knew him to be that there ready and brave and affectionate.

“Rabbett,” he said, in a jiffy, “come along with me.”

“Master Lionel,” I asks, “where to?” For the fact were my head weren’t as clear as his, and I were a bit bothered as to what would be the best thing to be done first.

“I am going to Captain Roscoe’s lodgings,” he answers, as steady as you please.

And so, if you’ll believe me, off we goes, out into the street, him a-keeping step beautiful, as he always did, but not saying a word until at last I speak to him.

“Master Lionel,” I says, “what are you thinking about?”

“I am thinking,” he answers, his dark eyes shining, “about what I am going to say to Roscoe.”

But it weren’t so easy to find Roscoe. We did not know exactly where his lodgings were, and so we had to inquire in first one place and then another. The people we fancied could tell us knew nothing definite, when we went to them; and when we got the name of the street, it were hard to find. But we did find it at last, after a great deal of trouble and a great deal of delay, which was worse. The delay was what upset us, for both of us felt pretty certain that Captain Basil Roscoe would lose very little time in getting Miss Rose away out of the reach of her friends, if he once found her willing to go with him.

By the time we reached the end of the street where he lived, Master Lionel were that worked up and excited that he was growing paler and paler, and his eyes were like lanterns in his face, and he caught hold of my hand and held it hard and fast.

“Rabbett,” he says, “what if we should be too late?”

“I can’t think such bad luck could happen to us, sir,” I answers him back.

And then it were—just at that instant—as his sharp young eyes spied something out ahead of us, for he drew his hand away, and started running, just throwing back a word or so to me.

“There’s a carriage before the door,” he said, “and they are getting into it.”

He were up that street like a deer, and in half a minute I were with him; but when I comes up, all out of breath, he were on the carriage-step, holding the door open; and, what’s more, holding at bay the black rascal who stood near, sneering and raging at him by turns. “Rabbett,” he cries out, “help me to hold the door open. No—go to the horses’ heads. Now, Rose, get out.”

I went to the horses’ heads, as I would have done if the captain himself had give the order, instead of “The Captain’s Youngest.” It made my heart ache, too, to hear the ring in the little chap’s voice, so like his father’s, and then to remember what the captain might have been—and what he were. Even the driver were struck all of a heap by the youngster’s pluck, and were so busy looking at him that he let me take my stand, without a word against it.

“Look here, mate,” he says to me, “here’s a rum go!”

“It’s bad enough,” says I. “Perhaps you’ll oblige me with them reins?”

“If you don’t come down from that step,” says Roscoe, saying every word slow, as if he was trying to hold himself back from striking the boy a blow as would kill him, “you impudent young devil, I will take the whip from the box there and cut you to pieces!”

Then Miss Rose bends forward. It is my impression as the cruel, murderous sound in the fellow’s voice was something she had never heard before, and it frightened her.

“Don’t speak to him in that way, Basil,” she says. “Oh, Lionel, dear, you shouldn’t have come. You must go back. You must, indeed. I shall never come home again, Lionel.” And she burst out crying.

“I shall go back, Rose,” says the boy, “but you must come with me. Rabbett and I came to fetch you, and we shall not leave you.” And then he looks at Roscoe square. “I am not afraid of your cutting me to pieces with your whip, sir,” he says. “Rabbett will see to that. But,” and the fire blazed up in his voice and his face and his eyes, as grand as if he had been the captain himself, “if I had come alone I would not have left this carriage door unless Rose had come with me. You might have used your whip, but you couldn’t have made me do that.”

“Am I,” says Roscoe, panting with the passion he dare not let out, “am I to throw you into the street under the horses’ hoofs, you impudent young devil?”