mr. chilverstone was one of those men upon whom many sorrows and disappointments are laid. he had set out in life with a choice selection of great ambitions, and at forty-five not one of them had fructified. ill-health had always weighed him down in one direction; ill-luck in another; the only piece of good fortune which had ever come to him came when the earl of simonstower, who had heard of him as an inoffensive man content to serve a parish without going to extremes in either of the objectionable directions, presented him to a living which even in bad times was worth five hundred pounds a year. but just before this preferment came in his way mr. chilverstone had the misfortune to lose his wife, and the enjoyment of the fit things of a country living was necessarily limited to him for some time. he was not greatly taxed by his pastoral duties, for his flock, from the earl downwards, loved that type of parson who knows how to keep his place, and only insists on his professional prestige on sundays and the appointed days, and he had no great inclination to occupy himself in other directions. as the bitterness of his great sorrow slipped away from him he found his life resolving itself into a level—his time was passed in reading, in pottering about his garden, and, as she grew up, in educating his only child, a girl who at the time of her mother’s death was little more than an infant. at the time of lucian’s arrival in the village mr. chilverstone’s daughter was at school in belgium—the boy’s first visits to the vicarage were therefore made to a silent and lonely house, and they proved very welcome to its master.
lucian’s experience at the grammar-school was never repeated under the new régime. the vicar had been somewhat starved in the matter of conversation for{53} more years than he cared to remember, and it was a godsend to him to have a keen and inquiring mind opposed to his own. his pupil’s education began and was continued in an unorthodox fashion; there was no system and very little order in it, but it was good for man and boy. they began to spend much time together, in the field as much as in the study. mr. chilverstone, encouraged thereto by lucian, revived an ancient taste for arch?ology, and the two made long excursions to the ruined abbeys, priories, castles, and hermitages in their neighbourhood. miss pepperdine, to whom lucian invariably applied for large supplies of sandwiches on these occasions, had an uncomfortable suspicion that the boy would have been better employed with a copy-book or a slate, but she had great faith in the vicar, and acknowledged that her nephew never got into mischief, though he had certainly set his room on fire one night by a bad habit of reading in bed. she had become convinced that lucian was an odd chicken, who had got into the brood by some freak of fortune, and she fell into the prevalent fashion of the family in regarding him as something uncommon that was not to be judged by ordinary rules of life or interfered with. to mr. pepperdine and to judith he remained a constant source of wonder, interest, and amusement, for his tongue never ceased to wag, and he communicated to them everything that he saw, heard, and thought, with a freedom and generosity that kept them in a perpetual state of mental activity.
towards the end of june, when lucian had been three months at simonstower, he walked into the vicar’s study one morning to find him in a state of mild excitement. mr. chilverstone nodded his head at a letter which lay open on his desk.
‘the day after to-morrow,’ he said, ‘you will see my daughter. she is coming home from school.’
lucian made no answer. it seemed to him that this bare announcement wrought some subtle change. he knew nothing whatever of girls—they had never come{54} into his life, and he was doubtful about them. he stared hard at the vicar.
‘will you be glad to see her?’ he asked.
‘why, surely!’ exclaimed mr. chilverstone. ‘yes—i have not seen her for nearly a year, and it is two years since she left home. yes—millie is all i have.’
lucian felt a pang of jealousy. it was part of his nature to fall in love with every new friend he made; in return, he expected each new friend to devote himself to him. he had become very fond of the vicar; they got on together excellently; it was not pleasant to think that a girl was coming between them. besides, what mr. chilverstone said was not true. this millie was not all he had—he had some of him, lucian.
‘you will like my little girl,’ the vicar went on, utterly oblivious of the fact that he was making the boy furiously jealous. ‘she is full of life and fun—a real ray of sunshine in a house.’ he sighed heavily and looked at a portrait of his wife. ‘yes,’ he continued, ‘she is quite a lively girl, my little millie. a sort of tomboy, you know. i call her sprats; it seems to fit her, somehow.’
lucian almost choked with rage and grief. all the old, pleasant companionship; all the long talks and walks; all the disputations and scholarly wrangles were to be at an end, and all because of a girl whose father called her sprats! it was unbelievable. he gazed at the unobservant clergyman with eyes of wonder; he had come to have a great respect for him as a scholar, and could not understand how a man who could make the greek grammar so interesting could feel any interest in a girl, even though that girl happened to be his own daughter. for women like his aunts, and mrs. trippett, and the housekeeper at the castle, lucian had a great liking; they were all useful in one way or another, either to get good things to eat out of, or to talk to when one wanted to talk; but girls—whatever place had they in the economy of nature! he had never spoken to a girl in his life, except to little mary trippett, who was{55} nine, and to whom he sometimes gave sweets and dolls. would he be expected to talk to this girl whose father called her sprats? he turned hot and cold at the thought.
his visit to the vicarage that morning was a dead failure. mr. chilverstone’s behaviour was foolish and ridiculous: he would talk of sprats. he even went as far as to tell lucian of some of sprats’s escapades. they were mostly of the practical-joke order, and seemed to afford mr. chilverstone huge amusement—lucian wondered how he could be so silly. he endeavoured to be as polite as possible, but he declined an invitation to stay to lunch. he would cheerfully listen to mr. chilverstone on the very dryest points of an irregular verb, but mr. chilverstone on sprats was annoying—he almost descended to futility.
lucian refused two invitations that afternoon. mr. pepperdine offered to take him with him to york, whither he was proceeding on business; miss judith asked him if he would like to go with her to the house of a friend in whose grounds was a haunted hermitage. he declined both invitations with great politeness and went out in solitude. part of the afternoon he spent with an old man who mended the roads. the old man was stone-deaf and needed no conversational effort on the part of a friend, and when he spoke himself he talked of intelligent subjects, such as rheumatism, backache, and the best cure for stone in the bladder. lucian thought him a highly intelligent man, and presented him with a screw of tobacco purchased at the village shop—it was a tacit thankoffering to the gods that the old man had avoided the subject of girls. his spirits improved after a visit to the shoemaker, who told him a brand-new ghost story for the truth of which he vouched with many solemn asseverations, and he was chatty with his aunt keziah when they took tea together. but that night he did not talk so much as usual, and he went to bed early and made no attempt to coax miss pepperdine into letting him have the extra{56} light which she had confiscated after he had set his bed on fire.
next day lucian hoped to find the vicar in a saner frame of mind, but to his astonishment and disgust mr. chilverstone immediately began to talk of sprats again, and continued to do so until he became unbearable. lucian was obliged to listen to stories which to him seemed inept, fatuous, and even imbecile. he was told of sprats’s first distinct words; of her first tooth; of her first attempts to walk; of the memorable occasion upon which she placed her pet kitten on the fire in order to warm it. the infatuated father, who had not had an opportunity of retailing these stories for some time, and who believed that he was interesting his listener, continued to pour forth story after story, each more feeble and ridiculous than the last, until lucian could have shrieked with the agony which was tearing his soul to pieces. he pleaded a bad headache at last and tried to slip away—mr. chilverstone detained him in order to give him an anti-headache powder, and accompanied his researches into the medicine cupboard with a highly graphic description of a stomach-ache which sprats had once contracted from too lavish indulgence in unripe apples, and was cured by himself with some simple drug. the vicar, in short, being a disingenuous and a simple-minded man, had got sprats on the brain, and he imagined that every word he said was meeting with a responsive thrill in the boy’s heart.
lucian escaped the fatuous father at last. he rushed out into the sunlight, almost choking with rage, grief, and disappointment. he flung the powder into the hedge-bottom, sat down on a stone-heap at the side of the road, and began to swear in italian. he swore freely and fluently until he had exhausted that eloquent vocabulary which one may pick up in naples and venice and in the purlieus of hatton garden, and when he had finished he began it all over again and repeated it with as much fervour as one should display, if one is honest, in reciting the rosary. this saved him from{57} apoplexy, but the blood grew black within him and his soul was scratched. it had been no part of lucian’s plans for the future that sprats should come between him and his friend.
he slept badly that night, and while he lay awake he said to himself that it was all over. it was a mere repetition of history—a woman always came between men. he had read a hundred instances—this was one more. of course, the sprats creature would oust him from his place—nothing would ever be as it had been. all was desolate, and he was alone. he read several pages of the fourth canto of childe harold as soon as it was light, and dropped asleep with the firm conviction that life is a grey thing.
all that day and the next lucian kept away from the vicarage. the domestic deities wondered why he did not go as usual; he invented plausible excuses with facile ingenuity. he neglected his books and betrayed a suspicious interest in mr. pepperdine’s recent purchases of cattle; he was restless and at times excited, and miss keziah looked at his tongue and felt his forehead and made him swallow a dose of a certain home-made medicine by which she set great store. on the third day the suppressed excitement within him reached boiling-point. he went out into the fields mad to work it off, and by good or ill luck lighted upon an honest rustic who was hoeing turnips under a blazing midsummer sun. lucian looked at the rustic with the eye of a mocking and mischievous devil.
‘boggles,’ he said, with a mephistophelian coaxing, ‘would you like to hear some italian?’ boggles ruminated.
‘why, master lucian,’ he said, ‘i don’t know as i ever did hear that language—can’t say as i ever did, anyhow.’
‘listen, then,’ said lucian. he treated boggles to a string of expletives, delivered with native force and energy, making use of his eyes and teeth until the man began to feel frightened.{58}
‘lord sakes, master lucian!’ he said, ‘one ’ud think you was going to murder somebody—you look that fierce. it’s a queer sort o’ language that, sir—i never heard nowt like it. it flays a body.’
‘it is the most delightful language in the world when you want to swear,’ said lucian. ‘it....’
‘nonsense! it isn’t a patch on german. you wait till i get over the hedge and i’ll show you,’ cried a ringing and very authoritative voice. ‘i can reel off twice as much as that.’
lucian turned round with an instinctive feeling that a critical moment was at hand. he caught sight of something feminine behind the hedgerow; the next instant a remarkably nimble girl came over a half-made gap. the turnip-hoeing man uttered an exclamation which had much joy in it.
‘lord sakes if it isn’t miss millie!’ he said, touching his cap. ‘glad to see ’ee once again, missie. they did tell me you was coming from them furrineerin’ countries, and there you be, growed quite up, as one might say.’
‘not quite, but nearly, boggles,’ answered miss chilverstone. ‘how’s your rheumatics, as one might call ’em? they were pretty bad when i went away, i remember.’
‘they’re always bad i’ th’ winter, miss,’ said boggles, leaning on his hoe and evincing a decided desire to talk, ‘and a deal better in summer, allus providing the lord don’t send no rain. fine, dry weather, miss, is what i want—the rain ain’t no good to me.’
‘a little drop wouldn’t hurt the turnips, anyway,’ said miss chilverstone, looking about her with a knowing air. ‘seem pretty well dried up, don’t they?’ she looked at lucian. their eyes met: the boy stared and blushed; the girl stared and laughed.
‘did it lose its tongue, then?’ she said teasingly. ‘it seemed to have a very long and very ready one when it was swearing at poor old boggles. what made him use such bad language to you, boggles?’{59}
‘lord bless ’ee, missie,’ said boggles hurriedly, ‘he didn’t mean no harm, didn’t master lucian—he was telling me how they swear in eye-talian. not but what it didn’t sound very terrible—but he wouldn’t hurt a fly, wouldn’t master lucian, miss, he wouldn’t indeed.’
‘dear little lamb!’ she said mockingly, ‘i shouldn’t think he would.’ she turned on the boy with a sudden twist of her shoulders. ‘so you are lucian, are you?’ she asked.
‘i am lucian, yes,’ he answered.
‘do you know who i am?’ she asked, with a flashing look.
lucian stared back at her, and the shadow of a smile stole into his face.
‘i think,’ he said musingly, ‘i think you must be sprats.’
then the two faced each other and stared as only stranger children can stare.
mr. boggles, his watery old eyes keenly observant, leaned his chin upon his hoe and stared also, chuckling to himself. neither saw him; their eyes were all for each other. the girl, without acknowledging it, perhaps without knowing it, recognised the boy’s beauty and hated him for it in a healthy fashion. he was too much of a picture; his clothes were too neat; his collar too clean; his hands too white; he was altogether too much of a fine and finicking little gentleman; he ought, she said to herself, to be stuck in a velvet suit, and a point-lace collar, and labelled. the spirit of mischief entered into her at the sight of him.
lucian examined this strange creature with care. he was relieved to find that she was by no means beautiful. he saw a strong-limbed, active-looking young damsel, rather older and rather taller than himself, whose face was odd, rather than pretty, and chiefly remarkable for a prodigality of freckles and a healthy tan. her nose was pugnacious and inclined to be of the snub order; her hair sandy and anything but tidy;{60} there was nothing beautiful in her face but a pair of brown eyes of a singularly clear and honest sort. as for her attire, it was not in that order which an exacting governess might have required: she wore a blue serge frock in which she had evidently been climbing trees or scrambling through hedgerows, a battered straw hat wherein she or somebody had stuck the long feathers from a cock’s tail; there was a rent in one of her stockings, and her stout shoes looked as if she had tramped through several ploughed fields in them. all over and round her glowed a sort of aureole of rude and vigorous health, of animal spirits, and of a love of mischief—the youthful philosopher confronting her recognised a new influence and a new nature.
‘yes,’ she said demurely, ‘i’m sprats, and you’ve a cheek to call me so—who gave you leave, i’d like to know? what would you think if i told you that you’d look nice if you had a barrel-organ and a monkey on it? ha! ha! had him there, hadn’t i, boggles? well, do you know where i am going, monkey-boy?’
lucian sighed resignedly.
‘no,’ he answered.
‘going to fetch you,’ she said. ‘you haven’t been to your lessons for two days, and you’re to go this instant minute.’
‘i don’t think i want any lessons to-day,’ replied lucian.
‘hear him!’ she said, making a grimace. ‘what do they do with little boys who won’t go to school, boggles—eh?’
if lucian had known more of a world with which he had never, poor child, had much opportunity of making acquaintance, he would have seen that sprats was meditating mischief. her eyes began to glitter: she smiled demurely.
‘are you coming peaceably?’ she asked.
‘but i’m not coming at all,’ replied lucian.
‘aren’t you, though? we’ll soon settle that,{61} won’t we, boggles?’ she exclaimed. ‘now then, monkey—off you go!’
she was on him with a rush before he knew what was about to happen, and had lifted him off his feet and swung him on to her shoulder ere he could escape her. lucian expostulated and beseeched; sprats, shouting and laughing, made for a gap in the hedgerow; boggles, hugely delighted, following in the wake. at the gap a battle royal ensued—lucian fighting to free himself, the girl clinging on to him with all the strength of her vigorous young arms.
‘let me go, i say!’ cried lucian. ‘let me down!’
‘you’d best to go quiet and peaceable, master lucian,’ counselled boggles. ‘miss millie ain’t one to be denied of anything.’
‘but i won’t be carried!’ shouted lucian, half mad with rage. ‘i won’t....’
he got no further. sprats, holding on tight to her captive, caught her foot in a branch as she struggled over the gap, and pitched headlong through. there was a steep bank at the other side with a wide ditch of water at its foot: boggles, staring over the hedge with all his eyes, beheld captor and captive, an inextricable mass of legs and arms, turn a series of hurried somersaults and collapse into the duck-weed and water-lilies with a splash that drowned their mutual screams of rage, indignation, and delight.