Part 11

THE little Earl was a very little one indeed, as far as years and stature were, but he was a very big one if you consider his possessions and his importance. He was only a month old when his father died, and only six months old when his mother, too, left him for the cold damp vault, with its marbles and its rows of velvet coffins,—a vault that was very grand, but so chilly and so desolate that when they took the little Earl there on holy-days to lay his flowers down upon the dead he could never sleep for nights afterwards, remembering its darkness and solemnity.

The little Earl was called Hubert Hugh Lupus Alured Beaudesert, and was the Earl of Avillion and Lantrissaint; but by his own friends and his grandmother and his old nurse he was called only Bertie.

He was eight years old in the summer-time, when there befell him the adventure I am going now to relate to you, and he was, for his age, quite a baby; he was slender and slight, and he had a sweet little face like a flower, with very big eyes, and a quantity of fair hair cut after the fashion of the Reynolds and Gainsborough children. He had always been kept as if he were a china doll that would break at a touch. His grandmother and his uncle had been left the sole charge of him; and as they were both invalids, and the latter a priest, and both dwelt in great retirement at the castle of Avillion, the little Earl’s little life had not been a boy’s life.

He had always been tranquil, for every one loved him, and he had all things that he wished for; yet he was treated more as if he were a rare flower or a most fragile piece of porcelain, than a little bright boy of real flesh and blood; and, without knowing it, he was often tired of all his cotton-wool. He was such a tiny fellow, you see, to be the head of his race, and the last of it too; for there were no others of this great race from which he had sprung, and his uncle, as a priest, could never marry. Thus so much depended on this small short life that the fuss made over him, and the care taken of him, had ended in making him so incapable of taking any care of himself that if he had ever got out alone in a street he would have been run over to a certainty, and as he grew older he grew sad and feverish, and chafed because he was never allowed to do the things that all boys by instinct love to do. By nature the little Earl was very brave, but he was made timid by incessant cautions; and as he was, too, by nature very thoughtful, the seclusion from other children in which he was brought up made him too serious for his age.

Avillion was deep-bosomed in woods, throned high above a lake and moors and mountains, and setting its vast stone buttresses firmly down into the greenest, smoothest turf in all the green west country of England a grand and glorious place, famous in history, full of majesty and magnificence, and sung to, forever, by the deep music of the Atlantic waves. Once upon a time the Arthurian Court that Mr. Tennyson has told you of so often had held its solemn jousts and its blameless revels there; at least, so said the story of Avillion, as told in ballads of the country-side,—more trustworthy historians than most people think.

All those ballads the little Earl knew by heart, and he loved them more than anything, for Deborah, his nurse, had crooned them over his cradle before ever he could understand even the words of them; so that Arthur and Launcelot, and Sir Gawain and Sir Galahad, and all the knightly lives that were once at Tintagel, were more real to him than the living figures about him, and these fancies served him as his playmates,—for he had few others, except his dog Ralph and his pony Royal. His relatives were ailing, melancholy, attached to silence and solitude, and though they would have melted gold and pearls for Bertie’s drinking if he could have drunk them, never bethought themselves that noise and romps and laughter and fun and a little spice of peril are all things without which a child’s life is as dead and spiritless as a squirrel’s in a cage. And Bertie did not know it either. He studied under his tutor, Father Philip, a noble and learned old man, and he was caressed and cosseted by his nurse Deborah, and he wore beautiful little dresses, most usually of velvet, and he had wonderful toys that were sent from Paris, automatons that danced and fenced and played the guitar and animals that did just what live animals do and Punches and puppets that played and mimicked by clock-work, and little yachts that sailed by clock-work and whole armies of soldiers, and marvellous games costly and splendid; but he had nobody to play at all these things with, and it was dull work playing with them by himself. Deborah played with them in the best way she knew, but she was not a child, being sixty-six years old, and was of a slow imagination and of rheumatic movements.

“Run and play,” Father Philip would often say to him, taking him perforce from his books; but the little Earl would answer, sadly, “I have nobody to play with!”

That want of his attracted no attention from all those people who loved the ground his little feet trod on; he was surrounded with every splendor and indulgence, he had half the toys of the Palais Royal in his nursery, and he had a bed to sleep in of ivory inlaid with silver, that had once belonged to the little King of Rome; millions of money were being stored up for him, and lands wide enough to make a principality called him lord: it never occurred to anybody that the little Earl of Avillion was not the most fortunate child that lived under the sun.

“Why do people all call me ‘my lord’?” he asked one day, suddenly becoming observant of this fact.

“Because you are my lord,” said Deborah,—which did not content him.

He asked Father Philip.

“My dear little boy, it is your title: think not of it save as an obligation to bear your rank well and without stain.”

At last the little Earl grew so pale and thin and so delicate in health that the physician who was always watching over him said to his grandmother that the boy wanted change of air, and advised the southern coast for him, and cessation of almost all study; which order grieved Father Philip sorely, for Bertie could read his Livy well, and was beginning to spell through his Xenophon, and it cut the learned gentleman to the heart that his pupil should give up all this and go back on the royal road to learning. For both he and his uncle were resolved that the little Earl should be very learned, and the boy was eager enough to learn, only he liked still better knowing how the flowers grew, and why the birds could fly while he could not, and how the wood-bee made his neat house in the tree-trunk, and the beaver built his dam across the river,—inquiries which everybody about him was inclined to discourage. Natural science was not looked on with favor in the nursery and school-room of Avillion. It was considered to lead people astray.

So the little Earl was moved southward, with his grandmother, and his nurse, and his physician, and Ralph and Royal,—for he would not go without them,—and several servants as well. They were to go to Shanklin in the Isle of Wight, and they made the journey by sea in the beautiful sailing-yacht which was waiting for Bertie’s manhood, after having been the idol of his father’s. On board, the little Earl was well amused; but he worried every one about him by questions as to the fishes.

“Lord, child! they are but nasty clammy things, only nice when they are cooked,” said his nurse; and his grandmamma said to him, “Dear, they were made to live in the sea, just as the birds are made to fly in the air.” And this did not satisfy the little man at all; but he could get no more information, for the doctor, who could have told him a good deal, was under the thumb of his stately mistress, and Lady Avillion had said very sternly that the boy was not to be encouraged in his nonsense: what he must be taught were the duties of his position and all he owed to the country,—the poor little Earl!

He was a very small, slender, pale-cheeked lord indeed, with his golden hair hanging over his puzzled forehead, that used to ache sometimes with carrying Xenophon and Livy, and underneath the hair two great wondering blue eyes, of a blue so dark that they were like wet violets. His hands were tiny and thin, and his legs, clad in their red-silk stockings and black-velvet breeches, were like two sticks: people who saw him go by whispered about him and said all the poor little fellow’s rank and riches would not keep him long in the land of the living. Once the little Earl heard that said, and understood what it meant, and thought to himself, “I shouldn’t mind dying if I could take Ralph: perhaps there would be somebody to play with there.”

It was May, and there were not many folks at Shanklin: still, there were two or three children he might have played with, but his grandmamma thought them vulgar children, not fit playmates for him; and so the poor little Earl, with the burden of his greatness, had to walk soberly and sadly past them, with his little tired red-stockinged legs, while the little girls said to each other, in a whisper, “There’s a little lord!” and the boys hallooed out, “He’s the swell that owns the schooner.” Bertie would sigh, as he heard: what was the use of owning the schooner, when you had no one to play with on it, and never could do what you liked?

You have never seen Shanklin, for you have never been in England; and if you do go now, you will never see it as it was when Bertie walked there, when it was the prettiest and most primitive little place in England; now, they tell me, it has been made into a watering-place, with a pier and an esplanade.

Shanklin used to be a little green mossy village covered up in honeysuckle and hawthorn; low long houses, green too with ivy and creepers, hid themselves away in sweet-smelling old-fashioned gardens; yellow roads ran between high banks and hedges out to the green down or downward to the ripple of the sea; and the cool brown sands, glistening and firm, twice a day felt the kiss of the tide. The cliffs were brown too, for the most part; some were white; the gray sea stretched in front; and the glory of the place was its leafy chine and ravine that severed the rocks and was full of foliage and of the sound of birds. It used to be all so quiet there; now and then there passed in the offing a brig or a yacht or a man-of-war; now and then farmers’ carts came in from the downs by Appuldurcombe or the farms beyond the Undercliff; there were some fishing-cabins by the beach, and one old inn with a long grassy garden, where the coaches used to stop that ran through the quiet country from Ryde to Ventnor. It was so green, so still, so friendly, so fresh when I think of it I hear the swish of its lazy waves and I smell the smell of its eglantine hedges, and I see the big brown eyes of my gallant dog as he came breathless up from the sea.

Alas! you will never see it so. The hedges are down, they tell me, and the grand dog is dead, and the hateful engine tears through the fields, and the sands are beaten to make an esplanade, and the beach is noisy and hideous with the bray of bands and the laughter of fools.

What will the world be like when you are twenty? Very frightful, I fear. This is progress, they say?

But what of the little Earl? you ask.

Well, the little Earl knew Shanklin as I knew it,—when the blackbirds and thrushes sang in the quiet chine, and the sense of an infinite peace dwelt on its simple shores. His grandmamma had taken for the summer the house that stands in its woods at the head of the chine and looks straight down that rift of greenery to the gray sea. I know not what that house is now; then it was charming, chalet-like, yet spacious.

Here the little Earl was set free of his studies and kept out in the air when it was fine, and when it rained was sent, not to his books, but to his toys. Yet it did not seem to him any great change; for when he rode, James was with him; and when he walked, Deborah was with him; and when he bathed, William was with him; and when he was only in the garden, there was grandmamma.

He was never alone. Oh, how he longed to be alone sometimes! And he never had any playfellows: how he would watch those two or three vulgar little boys building sand-castles and sailing their boats! He would have given all his big schooner and its crew to be one of those little boys.

He had a cruise now and then off the island, and the skipper came up bare-headed and hoped my lord enjoyed the sail; but he did not enjoy it: William and Deborah were always after him, telling him to mind this, and take care of that, till he wished his pretty snow-white sailor dress with the gold buttons were only rags and tatters! For the poor little Earl was an adventurous and curious little lad at heart, and had a spirit of his own, though he was so meek; and he was tired of being treated like a baby.

His eighth birthday came round in June, and wonderful and magnificent were the presents he had sent him; but he only felt a little more tired than he had done before; the bonbons he was not allowed to eat, the splendidly-bound books seemed nonsense to a little classic who read Livy; the toys he did not care for, and the gold dressing-case his grandmamma gave him was no pleasure: he had one in silver, and his very hair he was never permitted to brush himself.

“As I may not eat the bonbons, might I send them all to the children on the sands?” he asked wistfully of his grandmother.

“Impossible, my love,” she answered. “We do not know who they are.”

“May I give them to the poor children then?” said the little lad.

“That would hardly be wise, dear. It would give them a taste for luxuries.”

Bertie sighed: life on this his eighth birthday seemed very empty.

“Why are people strangers to each other? Why does not everybody speak to every one else?” he said at last, desperately. “St. Paul says we are all brothers, and St. Francis——”

“My dear child, do not talk nonsense,” said Lady Avillion. “We shall have you a Radical when you are of age!”

“What is that?” said Bertie.

“The people who slew your dear Charles the First were Radicals,” said his grandmother, cleverly.

He was discouraged and silent. He went sorrowfully and leaned against one of the windows and looked down the green vista of the chine. It was raining, and they would not let him go out of doors. He thought to himself, “What use is it calling me ‘my lord,’ and telling me I own so much, and bowing down before me, if I may never do once, just once, as I like? I know I am a little boy; but then, if I am an Earl, if I am good enough to be _that_, I ought to be able to do once as I like. Else, if not, what is the use? And why does the skipper say always to me, ‘Your lordship is owner here’?”

And then a fancy came into his little head. Was he like the Princes in the Tower? Was he a prisoner, after all? His little mind was full of the pageant of history, and he made his mind up now that he was a princely captive watched and warded.

“Tell me, dear Deb,” he said, catching his nurse by the sleeve as she turned from his bed that night, “tell me, is it not true that I am in prison, though you are all kind to me; that somebody else wants my throne?”

Nurse Deborah thought he was “off his head,” and ran to the physician for a cooling draught, and sat up in fright all the night, not even reassured by his sound tranquil sleep.

Bertie asked her nothing more.

He was more sure than ever that a captive he was, kept in kindly and honorable durance, like James of Scotland in the Green Tower.

Whilst he was lying awake, a grand and startling idea dawned on him: What if he were to go out and see the world for himself? This notion has fascinated many a child before him. Did not St. Teresa of Spain, when she was a little thing, toddle out with a tiny brother over the brown sierras? So absolutely now did this enterprise dazzle and conquer the little Earl that before night was half-way over he had persuaded himself that a prisoner he _was_, and that his stolen kingdom he would go and find, just as the knights in his favorite tales sallied forth to seek the Holy Grail. The passion for adventure, for escape, for finding out the truth, grew so strong on him that at the first flush of daybreak he slid out of bed and resolved that go alone he would. He longed to take Ralph, but he feared it would not be right: who knew what perils or pains awaited him?—and to make the dog sharer in them seemed selfish. So he threw a glove of his own for Ralph to guard, bade him be still, and set about his own flight.

He made a sad bungle of dressing himself, for he had never clothed himself in his life; but at last he got the things on somehow, and most of them hind-part-before. But he did it all without awaking Deborah, and, taking his sailor-hat, he managed to drop out of the window on to the sward below without any one being aware.

It was quite early day; the sky was red, the shadows and the mists were still there, the birds were piping good-morrow to each other.

“How lovely it is!” he thought. “Oh, why doesn’t everybody get up at sunrise?”

He knew, however, that if he wanted to see the world by himself he must not tarry there and think about the dawn. So off he set, as fast as his not very strong legs could carry him, and he got down to the shore.

The fog was on the sea and screened it from his sight, and there was no one on the beach except a boy getting nets ready in an old boat. To the boy ran Bertie, and held to him two half-crowns. “Will you row me to Bonchurch for that?” he asked.

The boy grinned. “For sure, little master; and I’d like to row a dozen at the price.”

Into the boat jumped the little Earl, with all the feverish agility given to prisoners, who are escaping, by their freed instincts. It was a very old, dirty boat, and soiled his pretty white clothes terribly, but he had no eyes for that, he so enjoyed that delicious sense of being all alone and doing just as he liked. The boy was a big boy and strong, and rowed with a will; and the old tub went jumping and bobbing and splashing through the rather heavy swell. The gig of his yacht was a smart, long boat, beautifully clean, and with rowers all dressed in red caps and white jerseys; but the little Earl had never enjoyed rowing in _that_ half so much. There had been always somebody to look after him and say, “Don’t lean over the side,” or, “Mind the water does not splash you,” or, “Take care!” Oh, that tiresome “Take care!” It makes a boy want to jump head-foremost into the sea, or fling himself head-downwards from the nearest apple-tree! I know you have felt so yourself twenty times a week, though I do not tell you that you were right.

Nothing is prettier than the Undercliff as you look up at it from the sea,—a tangle of myrtle and laurel and beech and birch coming down to the very shore, all as Nature made it. Bertie, as the boat wabbled along like a fat old duck, looked up at it and was enchanted, and then he looked at the white wall of mist on the waters, and was enchanted too. It was like Wonderland. His dreams were broken by the fisher-lad’s voice:

“I’ll have to put you ashore at the creek, little master, and get back, or daddy’ll give me a hiding.”

“Who is ‘daddy’?”

“Father,” said the boy. “He’ll lick me, for the tub’s his’n.”

Bertie was perplexed. He had heard of bears being licked into shape by their fathers and mothers, but this boy, though rough and rather shapeless, looked too old for such treatment.

“You were a wicked boy to use the boat, then,” he said, with great severity.

The lad only grinned.

“Little master, you tipped me a crown.”

“I did not mean to tempt you to do wrong,” said Bertie very seriously still; and then he colored, for was he very sure that he was not doing wrong himself?

The old boat was grinding on the shingle then, and the rower of it was putting him ashore at a little creek that was wooded and pretty, and up which the sea ran at high tide; there was a little cottage at the head of it. I have heard that this wood-glen used to be in the old time a very famous place for smugglers, and it is still solitary and romantic, or at least was so still when the little Earl was set down there. “Where am I?” he asked the boy. But the wicked boy only grinned, and began to wabble back through the water as fast as his long slashing strokes could carry him. The little Earl felt rather foolish and rather helpless.

He was not far on his way towards seeing the world, and he began to wish for some breakfast. There was smoke going out of a chimney of the cottage, and the door of it stood open, but he was afraid the people there might stop him if he asked for anything, and, besides, the path up to it through the glen looked rocky and thorny and impassable, so he kept along by the beach, finding it heavy walking, for there were more stones than sands, and the beach was strewn with rocks, large and small, and stiff prickly furze. But he had the sea beside him and the world before him, and he walked on bravely, and in a little while he came into Bonchurch. It was very early yet, and Bonchurch was asleep, and most of its snug thatched houses, hidden away in their gardens and fuchsia hedges, were shut up snugly; the tall trees of its one street made a deep shadow in it, and the broad placid water of its great pool was green with their reflection: it was a sweet, quiet place, leafy as any haunt for fairies, yet on the very edge of the sea.

At a baker’s shop, a woman was lifting down the shutters. The little Earl took his hat off very prettily and said to her,—

“If you please, will you be kind enough to sell me some bread-and-milk?”

The woman stared, then laughed.

“Lord bless your pretty face! I only sell bread, but I’ll give you some milk in, for sake of your pinched cheeks. Come along inside, little gentleman.”

He went inside; it seemed a very funny place to him, so small and so dark, and so dusty with flour; but the smell of baking was sweet, and he was hungry.

She bustled about a little, and set before him a bowl of bread-and-milk, with a wooden spoon to eat it with. The little Earl put his hand in his pocket to pay for it; lo! he had not a farthing!

He turned very red, and then very white, and thought to himself that the money must have tumbled into the sea with his watch, which was missing too.

It did not occur to him that the wicked boy had taken both; yet such was the sad fact.

He rose, very sorrowful and confused and ashamed.

“Madam, I beg your pardon,” he said, in his little ceremonious way: “I thought I had money, but I have lost it. Thank you very much, but I cannot take the food.”

The woman was good-natured and shrewd.

“Lord! sup it up, my dear little gentleman,” she said to him. “You are welcome to it,—right welcome, you are; and your pa and your ma can pay for it.”

“No, no,” murmured Bertie, getting very red; and, fearing lest his longing for the meal should overcome his honor, he stumbled out of the baking-house door and ran up the tree-shadowed road faster than ever he had run in his life.

To be sure, he had plenty of money of his own; they all said so; but he never knew well where it was, or what it meant; and, besides, he intended never to go back to his grandmother and Deborah and Ralph and Royal any more, till he had found out the truth and seen his kingdom.