Little Lord Fauntleroy/Source/IX
IX
The fact was, his lordship the Earl of Dorincourt thought in those
days, of many things of which he had never thought before, and all his
thoughts were in one way or another connected with his grandson. His
pride was the strongest part of his nature, and the boy gratified it at
every point. Through this pride he began to find a new interest in life.
He began to take pleasure in showing his heir to the world. The world
had known of his disappointment in his sons; so there was an agreeable
touch of triumph in exhibiting this new Lord Fauntleroy, who could
disappoint no one. He wished the child to appreciate his own power and
to understand the splendor of his position; he wished that others should
realize it too. He made plans for his future.
Sometimes in secret he actually found himself wishing that his own past
life had been a better one, and that there had been less in it that this
pure, childish heart would shrink from if it knew the truth. It was not
agreeable to think how the beautiful, innocent face would look if its
owner should be made by any chance to understand that his grandfather
had been called for many a year "the wicked Earl of Dorincourt." The
thought even made him feel a trifle nervous. He did not wish the boy
to find it out. Sometimes in this new interest he forgot his gout,
and after a while his doctor was surprised to find his noble patient's
health growing better than he had expected it ever would be again.
Perhaps the Earl grew better because the time did not pass so slowly for
him, and he had something to think of beside his pains and infirmities.
One fine morning, people were amazed to see little Lord Fauntleroy
riding his pony with another companion than Wilkins. This new companion
rode a tall, powerful gray horse, and was no other than the Earl
himself. It was, in fact, Fauntleroy who had suggested this plan. As he
had been on the point of mounting his pony, he had said rather wistfully
to his grandfather:
"I wish you were going with me. When I go away I feel lonely because
you are left all by yourself in such a big castle. I wish you could ride
too."
And the greatest excitement had been aroused in the stables a few
minutes later by the arrival of an order that Selim was to be saddled
for the Earl. After that, Selim was saddled almost every day; and the
people became accustomed to the sight of the tall gray horse carrying
the tall gray old man, with his handsome, fierce, eagle face, by the
side of the brown pony which bore little Lord Fauntleroy. And in their
rides together through the green lanes and pretty country roads, the two
riders became more intimate than ever. And gradually the old man heard
a great deal about "Dearest" and her life. As Fauntleroy trotted by the
big horse he chatted gayly. There could not well have been a brighter
little comrade, his nature was so happy. It was he who talked the most.
The Earl often was silent, listening and watching the joyous, glowing
face. Sometimes he would tell his young companion to set the pony off at
a gallop, and when the little fellow dashed off, sitting so straight and
fearless, he would watch him with a gleam of pride and pleasure in his
eyes; and when, after such a dash, Fauntleroy came back waving his cap
with a laughing shout, he always felt that he and his grandfather were
very good friends indeed.
One thing that the Earl discovered was that his son's wife did not lead
an idle life. It was not long before he learned that the poor people
knew her very well indeed. When there was sickness or sorrow or poverty
in any house, the little brougham often stood before the door.
"Do you know," said Fauntleroy once, "they all say, 'God bless you!'
when they see her, and the children are glad. There are some who go to
her house to be taught to sew. She says she feels so rich now that she
wants to help the poor ones."
It had not displeased the Earl to find that the mother of his heir had a
beautiful young face and looked as much like a lady as if she had been
a duchess; and in one way it did not displease him to know that she was
popular and beloved by the poor. And yet he was often conscious of a
hard, jealous pang when he saw how she filled her child's heart and how
the boy clung to her as his best beloved. The old man would have desired
to stand first himself and have no rival.
That same morning he drew up his horse on an elevated point of the moor
over which they rode, and made a gesture with his whip, over the broad,
beautiful landscape spread before them.
"Do you know that all that land belongs to me?" he said to Fauntleroy.
"Does it?" answered Fauntleroy. "How much it is to belong to one person,
and how beautiful!"
"Do you know that some day it will all belong to you--that and a great
deal more?"
"To me!" exclaimed Fauntleroy in rather an awe-stricken voice. "When?"
"When I am dead," his grandfather answered.
"Then I don't want it," said Fauntleroy; "I want you to live always."
"That's kind," answered the Earl in his dry way; "nevertheless, some day
it will all be yours--some day you will be the Earl of Dorincourt."
Little Lord Fauntleroy sat very still in his saddle for a few moments.
He looked over the broad moors, the green farms, the beautiful copses,
the cottages in the lanes, the pretty village, and over the trees to
where the turrets of the great castle rose, gray and stately. Then he
gave a queer little sigh.
"What are you thinking of?" asked the Earl.
"I am thinking," replied Fauntleroy, "what a little boy I am! and of
what Dearest said to me."
"What was it?" inquired the Earl.
"She said that perhaps it was not so easy to be very rich; that if any
one had so many things always, one might sometimes forget that every
one else was not so fortunate, and that one who is rich should always
be careful and try to remember. I was talking to her about how good you
were, and she said that was such a good thing, because an earl had
so much power, and if he cared only about his own pleasure and never
thought about the people who lived on his lands, they might have trouble
that he could help--and there were so many people, and it would be such
a hard thing. And I was just looking at all those houses, and thinking
how I should have to find out about the people, when I was an earl. How
did you find out about them?"
As his lordship's knowledge of his tenantry consisted in finding out
which of them paid their rent promptly, and in turning out those who
did not, this was rather a hard question. "Newick finds out for me,"
he said, and he pulled his great gray mustache, and looked at his small
questioner rather uneasily. "We will go home now," he added; "and when
you are an earl, see to it that you are a better earl than I have been!"
He was very silent as they rode home. He felt it to be almost incredible
that he who had never really loved any one in his life, should find
himself growing so fond of this little fellow,--as without doubt he
was. At first he had only been pleased and proud of Cedric's beauty and
bravery, but there was something more than pride in his feeling now. He
laughed a grim, dry laugh all to himself sometimes, when he thought how
he liked to have the boy near him, how he liked to hear his voice, and
how in secret he really wished to be liked and thought well of by his
small grandson.
"I'm an old fellow in my dotage, and I have nothing else to think of,"
he would say to himself; and yet he knew it was not that altogether.
And if he had allowed himself to admit the truth, he would perhaps have
found himself obliged to own that the very things which attracted him,
in spite of himself, were the qualities he had never possessed--the
frank, true, kindly nature, the affectionate trustfulness which could
never think evil.
It was only about a week after that ride when, after a visit to his
mother, Fauntleroy came into the library with a troubled, thoughtful
face. He sat down in that high-backed chair in which he had sat on the
evening of his arrival, and for a while he looked at the embers on the
hearth. The Earl watched him in silence, wondering what was coming. It
was evident that Cedric had something on his mind. At last he looked up.
"Does Newick know all about the people?" he asked.
"It is his business to know about them," said his lordship. "Been
neglecting it--has he?"
Contradictory as it may seem, there was nothing which entertained and
edified him more than the little fellow's interest in his tenantry. He
had never taken any interest in them himself, but it pleased him well
enough that, with all his childish habits of thought and in the midst
of all his childish amusements and high spirits, there should be such a
quaint seriousness working in the curly head.
"There is a place," said Fauntleroy, looking up at him with wide-open,
horror-stricken eye--"Dearest has seen it; it is at the other end of the
village. The houses are close together, and almost falling down; you
can scarcely breathe; and the people are so poor, and everything is
dreadful! Often they have fever, and the children die; and it makes them
wicked to live like that, and be so poor and miserable! It is worse than
Michael and Bridget! The rain comes in at the roof! Dearest went to see
a poor woman who lived there. She would not let me come near her until
she had changed all her things. The tears ran down her cheeks when she
told me about it!"
The tears had come into his own eyes, but he smiled through them.
"I told her you didn't know, and I would tell you," he said. He jumped
down and came and leaned against the Earl's chair. "You can make it all
right," he said, "just as you made it all right for Higgins. You always
make it all right for everybody. I told her you would, and that Newick
must have forgotten to tell you."
The Earl looked down at the hand on his knee. Newick had not forgotten
to tell him; in fact, Newick had spoken to him more than once of the
desperate condition of the end of the village known as Earl's Court.
He knew all about the tumble-down, miserable cottages, and the bad
drainage, and the damp walls and broken windows and leaking roofs,
and all about the poverty, the fever, and the misery. Mr. Mordaunt
had painted it all to him in the strongest words he could use, and his
lordship had used violent language in response; and, when his gout had
been at the worst, he said that the sooner the people of Earl's Court
died and were buried by the parish the better it would be,--and there
was an end of the matter. And yet, as he looked at the small hand on his
knee, and from the small hand to the honest, earnest, frank-eyed face,
he was actually a little ashamed both of Earl's Court and himself.
"What!" he said; "you want to make a builder of model cottages of me,
do you?" And he positively put his own hand upon the childish one and
stroked it.
"Those must be pulled down," said Fauntleroy, with great eagerness.
"Dearest says so. Let us--let us go and have them pulled down to-morrow.
The people will be so glad when they see you! They'll know you have come
to help them!" And his eyes shone like stars in his glowing face.
The Earl rose from his chair and put his hand on the child's shoulder.
"Let us go out and take our walk on the terrace," he said, with a short
laugh; "and we can talk it over."
And though he laughed two or three times again, as they walked to and
fro on the broad stone terrace, where they walked together almost
every fine evening, he seemed to be thinking of something which did
not displease him, and still he kept his hand on his small companion's
shoulder.