Piccino, and other child stories

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?”

But Master Lionel’s back was turned to him. He was pleading with his sister.

“Rose, dear,” he says, “come home with me. You will come home with me, I know.” And he caught hold of her hand.

God knows how it all happened—I don’t. If I had only been quick enough to see in time, the captain’s youngest might have been alive this day, a brave young fellow, such as the captain had been in those first days in India—a brave, handsome young soldier, as would have been a honor to his country, and a stanch friend yet to me.

But that weren’t to be. Just as he stood there, his foot on the carriage-step, a-holding his sister’s hand, the passion in the heart of the rascal watching him broke forth. He caught him by the shoulder, there were a short struggle as the boy tried to free himself, and before I could reach them he had whirled him away from the door—with greater force than he intended, I’ve tried to believe. The frightened horses lashed out their hoofs and sprang forward, struggling over the child’s very body as he lay stunned under their feet.

Scoundrel as he was, I never could make it look square to myself as the man meant the harm he did. His face was out and out deathly, as he leaped forward to save him as quick as I did myself. But we were both too late. We could only drag at the reins, and stop the horses in time to prevent the wheels passing over him—that were all.

We had him out in a minute, and Miss Rose was out of the carriage, kneeling on the pavement by him, and the driver was down off his box.

“Great God!” says Roscoe, “I never meant to do him such a harm. He’s dead!” And he shuddered all over, with fear, perhaps, as much as anything else.

But he weren’t dead, and he hadn’t even fainted, though he were stunned at first. I had lifted him in my arms, and he lay against me, panting a bit, and stone-white, all but for a stain of blood on one temple. It weren’t his head as was so badly hurt, it were his side, where one of the horses had lashed out and struck him. And as sure as I’m a living man, in a few minutes he opens his eyes and lays hold of his sister’s hand.

“Rose,” he says, “will you—go home—with me—now?”

She knelt over him, wringing her hands, and sobbing as if her heart would break. She would not let her lover come near her. When he tried to speak, she shrank away, shuddering.

It’s my belief as what she had seen in his face during the last ten minutes would have broke her faith in him, even if the young master had met no hurt. And now she were that terrified that she were as helpless as a child.

“Is he much hurt?” she kept saying. “Rabbett, oh, Rabbett! let me take him home to mamma. Put him into the carriage.” And then she turned upon Roscoe, fierce and wild. “Go away,” she cried out. “You have killed him! Go away, and never let me see you again!”

There were a dreadful house when we took him home. Mrs. Dalgetty went out of one faint into another, as she always did when she were frightened. The servants ran backward and forward, doing nothing, the children crowded round us, crying, and the captain looked on at all we did like a man in a dream.

He were hurt and bruised and broken that bad—poor little fellow!—that when the doctor came, and were beginning to go to work on him he looks up at me with his bright, troubled eye, and says to me:

“Rabbett, please take hold of my hand.”

I were that near breaking down and sobbing out loud that I were ashamed of myself. It were a comfort to me, in many a day after, to think I had took hold of his hand, and that he had asked me to do it.

And when the hard job was over, the doctor put his hands into his coat pockets, and stands looking at him for a minute or so, and then he turns to me and beckons me out of the room.

“Sir,” I ventured to say, “Master Lionel—will he——” But I could not finish, somehow. I meant to say, “Will he get over it?”

“No,” says he. “I am very sorry to say it; but he will not.”

Will you believe me as the words struck me like a slung-shot. Not having no family of my own, and never having clung to nothing on earth as I had clung to that there generous, neglected little fellow, just at that minute I felt as if I’d got a blow as was too hard to stand up against. I couldn’t face it straight. When I had been lonely in my way, he had been lonely in his, and we had been a help and a comfort to each other in ways as outsiders never understood.

“Sir,” I puts it to him, quite hoarse when I gets my voice back, “when——” And I couldn’t finish that question neither.

“Well,” he answers me back, “I am afraid before morning.”

I went back to the room and stayed there all night.

It seemed a strange sort of thing that at the very last him and me was together alone, as we always had seemed to be. He had coaxed Miss Rose to go to bed; he would not rest until she went; and when she bent down to kiss him, he says to her, in a whisper, quite bright and cheerful: “Don’t cry, Rose. It’s all right.”

And then the captain gets tired, and begins to doze, and Mrs. Dalgetty falls asleep on the sofa; and so Master Lionel and me was left together; me watching him, and listening to the clock ticking; him lying quiet, with his eyes shut.

But toward daybreak he gets a bit restless, and stirs, and the next thing I sees him looking at me, quite wide awake.

“Rabbett,” says he, in a bit of a hurry, “open the window.”

And when I goes and does it, and comes back, he puts out his hand.

“Rabbett,” he says, “I’m very fond of you;” and something wistful comes into his eyes, and I sees a faint gray shadow creeping up over his face. “I was always fond of you, and I always shall be fond of you,” says he. “Don’t let my hand go, Rabbett.”

And the next minute the gray shadow has changed his brave, handsome, childish face all at once and altogether. He gives me a innocent, bright look—just one, as if he were wondering why I shook so—and shuts his eyes. He would never open them again on me, as was so fond and proud of him in my poor way. When they opened again he would see something brighter than the morning sky, as was just growing red and golden before the east window.

Of course they fretted over him for a while, finding out most likely as he’d made himself dearer than they’d thought before he were gone. They could not have helped missing him if they had been more careless than they were. Sometimes I fancied the captain was checked a bit and sad, and blamed himself in secret, but his days of being open and soft-hearted was over, and it were hard to tell. I know it was a long time before he forgave Miss Rosie, though for her sake the matter was hushed up, and no one but themselves knew exactly how the accident happened. Miss Rose could never bear the sound of Basil Roscoe’s name again, and she married a good man a few years after, and made him a good wife. So the poor little fellow as gave his life for her did not lose it for nothing, though, if you were to ask me which of the two—but, there, it’s not for me to take on myself to argue out! But he were only a boy to them—only a child. They didn’t know him as I did, and so after a while their grief died out, and in a year or so he was half forgotten.