CHAPTER XX.

THE KING OF MUFFS.

“I’m dreadfully afraid that those boys have been bullying Gaston again,” Phoena remarked to Faith, some days later.

“Why, I saw them all starting out together to play cricket on the common,” said Faith, “less than an hour ago.”

“I know, but when I came through the orchard just now, Gaston dashed past me, with his head down, and flew through a gap in the hedge. I did not run after him, for I saw he did not want me to notice him.”

“Really,” cried Fay, a little impatiently, “I think it must be his own fault. Our boys are not really bullies; see how good they are to the infants, and I’m sure if Gaston would only play with them like a sensible boy they would be glad enough to have him.”

“Of course they would,” put in Di; “the truth is, he can’t get on with them, because he’s such a wretched little French specimen. He’s only fit to sit by Phoena and tell silly stories about French fairies. Ugh! I’m glad I wasn’t born a French girl.”

“It’s no credit to you that you weren’t,” said Phoena, quickly, “and I think it’s very unkind of you to be always reminding Gaston of what he can’t help. He never jeers our boys for being English, and I daresay they seem quite as silly to him as--”

“Oh, no, I’m sure they can’t,” broke in Di, whilst Faith added, “I’m certain that Gaston would do anything to be like our boys.”

“Of course, anyone can see that,” said Phoena, “that’s why I’m so sorry for him. I know he’d love to be treated as an equal by Jack and Phil, for he has a deal more spirit in him than he shows.”

But even Phoena did not gauge how much Gaston pined to be admitted to an equality with the English boys, for whom he felt an unbounded admiration; nor did she guess how, at the same time, he resented their jeers at his nationality. So long as his parents lived, their little Gaston had been their _bijou_, their _petit coeur_--their jewel, their little heart,--and he had been taught to consider France as the grandest country in all the world, and to be proud, very proud, of having been born a Frenchman.

So, when he first came to England to make his home with his grandmother, it was absolutely bewildering to his seven-year-old intelligence to grasp the reason of Madame Delzant’s Martha’s contemptuous pity for his Frenchified ways and clothes, a pity which changed entirely into open scorn when the old lady became too ill to leave her room again, and Gaston was left wholly at the mercy of this well-meaning, but terribly narrow-minded servant.

“You dare tell me, you little French whipper-snapper, that France is as good as England, and that my cooking isn’t as much to your liking as your old _Murrie’s_, or whatever you call her,” Martha exclaimed; “Not eat my potatoes, indeed!”

This was when Gaston, sighing for his _pommes de terre sautées_, had pushed aside a plate of plain boiled potatoes with a sigh.

“You’ll learn to starve a little, young gentleman, or have some English sense shaken into you.”

Martha did not mean to be unkind to the forlorn little foreigner, but still, she had struck at his very heart’s roots, and before he had been many months in England, Gaston found himself wondering why the fact of being a French boy was reckoned to him as a disgrace, which entitled him to all manner of scornful epithets and contemptuous insinuations.

“I wonder,” Gaston said to himself one morning, as he sat on the wall of his grandmother’s garden, “I wonder if the people in England do not like being called what they really are. I do notice that boy who has red hair does not like being called red-haired, and the only time that Martha ever slapped me was when I said that she looked old. Perhaps _they_ don’t like being called English, so that is why, when they want to be unpleasing to me, they call me a French boy. I’ll try, and see.” And, anxious to test the worth of his new theory, Gaston slipped off the wall and accosted an ancient man, who was trimming the laurels.

“_Jardinor_,” he began, standing well beyond the range of that functionary’s shears, “Jardinor, you’re an Englishman.”

“Thank the Lord, I am. I’d have been ashamed to have been born anything else,” returned old Wakeford, with a heartiness that demolished poor Gaston’s theory.

“Well, it is droll, I do not understand,” he thought, retreating disconcerted, and more bewildered than ever.

Yet, although in his new surroundings, his nationality was so clearly accounted a shameful thing, Gaston was too good a patriot to be persecuted into accounting it so himself. “On the contrary,” he said to himself, “they shall see for themselves, that a French boy can be as good as an English one,” and with a resolution that did credit to his tiny frame and tender age, Gaston, in spite of many involuntary tears and frequent failures, held fast to his determination.

All the same, his present training under the young Kenyons, though it might in the end “make a man” of him, was actually making him very miserable.

He worshipped Fay for her gentle ways; he loved nothing better than to be with Phoena, and listen to her quaint old stories, and he thoroughly enjoyed a game with Marygold; but he was so afraid of being called unmanly by the boys, that he scarcely dared have anything to do with the girls, though he was constantly on the look-out to render them a service.

Both for Jack and Phil, Gaston’s admiration was unbounded; he would accept all their knocking about as a distinct honour coming from their hands; nor did he, as a rule, resent what Hubert did, or said. But as for Andrew, he hated him.

But this was not due to the old ogre episode--that was long ago forgiven. Gaston’s detestation of Andrew, and the resentment he nourished against him, had a deeper root.

Towards the others he had the cordial feelings that a generous boy has for those whom he knows to be manlier than himself, and was learning to take their chaff, as it was meant; but for Andrew, with his selfishness, his sneaking tricks, and his bragging, which was such a poor disguise for his natural timidity, Gaston had the greatest contempt. To be made an object of ridicule by, or before Andrew, was real torture to Gaston, so true is it, that to be humiliated before those who we despise is about the sharpest form of suffering of which we are capable. To be jeered by Phil or Jack for want of pluck in tree-climbing, or for his “butter-fingers” in letting a ball slip at cricket, was sometimes a little trying to Gaston’s naturally quick temper, but when Andrew ventured to taunt him in like manner, or called him “Mamselle Gaston” when he ran away from a cow (which they all knew that Andrew would never have faced himself), then Gaston’s spirit was sore, with a bitterness beyond all description.

At last, Andrew’s mere presence grew to be antagonistic to Gaston, so that no expedition or undertaking of any sort was likely to be a success, so far as he was concerned, if Andrew was of the party.

It was because Andrew was standing by, so ready to jeer, that Gaston had lost his temper, on the morning on which our chapter opens, when he brought his own share in that day’s proceedings to a tragical conclusion.

Though Hubert was generally sweet temper itself, he it was who began the disturbance. Andrew had ordered him to carry his bat and stumps to the common, just when Hubert wanted to stay in the orchard, and play at boar-hunting with Gaston and Marygold. So the order to accompany the elder boys to the cricket ground was very unwelcome.

“You can carry Andrew’s things to-day,” Hubert said to Gaston.

“No,” said the latter, who had no mind to serve Andrew, “you are the valet of Andrew, I not.”

“You’d _have_ to carry them if Andrew chose to make you,” said Hubert, incensed at Gaston’s refusal, “yes, you would, Mamselle Gaston.”

It was the first time that Hubert had ever dared call Gaston so, and, though he felt himself under Andrew’s protection, he was half afraid.

And small wonder. The angry flame that leapt into Gaston’s eyes at his words was ill to see.

“Don’t say that again,” he said, speaking in a slow, threatening voice.

“Hullo, you small boys, what are you about?” cried Jack, looking back, “what’s up, eh, Andrew?”

“It strikes me someone will soon be _down_,” laughed Andrew, “these small boys can’t settle their difficulties, eh, Mamselle Gaston?”

“Eh, Mamselle Gaston?” echoed Hubert, but before he could say another word, before anyone could interfere, Gaston, losing all self-control, fell upon Hubert, and dealt him such a blow, that he was sent rolling head over heels down the grassy bank, at the top of which the fray had begun. But Gaston had not finished with him then.

Down the bank he followed, collaring Hubert, before the latter could find his feet, and shaking him with a fury that almost frightened Jack and Phil. Hubert’s nose was streaming with blood, and he looked a pitiable object when Jack extricated him from Gaston’s clutches, but that was not directly. Jack had a schoolboy’s sense of justice, and though Hubert was very dear to him, he knew that he must have drawn this chastisement on himself by his incorrigible cheekiness.

“Now, you’ve both had a jolly good mill,” he said, using his own handkerchief on his little brother’s face with rough tenderness, “and you’ll be both a deal the better for it. Shut up, Andrew, will you?” as the latter tried to egg the combatants on afresh. “My word, old chap, you’ll have a glorious black eye, and no mistake, but I’ll be bound you’ve deserved it. It’s been our fault, though, for not licking you more. Now, Gaston, old man, come and shake hands with your vanquished foe.”

“Yes, and hold up your pecker,” said Phil, patting Gaston on the back, “for you’re a jolly good fellow, who has learnt at last how to use his fists.”

“Yes, yes,” chimed in Jack, “he’s a jolly good fellow.”

Surely no single moment in Gaston’s short life had ever been a prouder one.

For once, he was an acknowledged victor on English soil, and no one remembered to call him “French froggy.”

But alack! alack! they did not forget for long.

Flushed though he was by his victory, Gaston was genuinely grieved at Hubert’s pitiable plight, for he was crying bitterly now, not from his hurts--he was not so babyish--it was the mortification of having been beaten by

Gaston that brought the tears down his swollen cheeks. So that Gaston, moved to pity, and forgetting that he was not amongst his own French comrades, instead of shaking hands with Hubert in due form, ran forward, impulsively, like a thorough French boy, and, throwing his arms round the vanquished’s neck, kissed him warmly on each cheek.

This action, so natural to Gaston, was greeted with a general howl of disgust from the on-lookers.

“Oh, I say, shut up, Mamselle Gaston!”

“Oh, you awful French frog!”

“Oh, drop your beastly slobbering, do!”

These, and various other exclamations, couched in more direct, and less poetical terms, were hissed and hurled at poor Gaston for full three minutes, before he realised the nature of his offence.

“Now, I say, you fellows,” sneered Andrew, “I think he’ll be ‘Mamselle Gaston’ for the rest of his natural life; fancy any decent fellow behaving in such a way.”

“Yes, really you French boys must be awful muffs,” said Phil.

“Of course they are,” said Andrew, spitefully, “and Gaston is the king of muffs, eh, mamselle?”

For a moment Gaston stood quite still, looking down without uttering a word. He was abased, but not ashamed, and, strange as it may seem, the feeling that he was abased in Andrew’s sight acted as a stimulus to his self-love.

As some horses, at the touch of the spur, make straight for the winning-post, so Gaston, in that moment of humiliation--a humiliation which was all the more bitter, because it had trodden so quickly on the heels of his short-lived triumph--Gaston vowed within himself, that come what might, he would show Andrew yet that the “king of muffs” was less of a “mamselle” than himself.

“Well, are we all going to stand here till midnight?” asked Phil, presently. “Here, Hubert, shut up bellowing, and thank Gaston for making a man of you, by giving you your first black eye. My goodness, how the girls will stare when they see it.”

“Yes, let’s come on to the Common now,” said Jack; “you can come too, Gaston, if you’ll promise not to slobber me,” and Jack made a very comical grimace.

Without answering, Gaston turned away, disappearing into the orchard, where Phoena ran up against him, some twenty minutes later. Believing that he would be safe there, Gaston had had a hearty cry, but at sight of Phoena, he had fled through the orchard hedge to the copse beyond. Flinging himself down there, amongst the tall, thick bracken, Gaston had sobbed and muttered, muttered and sobbed, in a fashion quite peculiar to himself.

Poor little lonely creature. He was very like a fledgeling, pushed suddenly over the edge of his nest, with no parent bird to teach him that he had wings, much less how to use them.

“Oh, maman, maman, ma mère, ma mère!” he cried, and even as the echo of his bitter cry came back to him, borne on the still summer afternoon breeze, there came with it another sound, a sound of words spoken long, long ago. “Pray, pray, my child, never forget to pray, and your good angel will carry your prayers to Him Who cares for the little children.” And, kneeling upright, amidst the high bracken, Gaston, who never forgot to say the prayers that his mother had taught him, crossed himself reverently, as was his wont, and poured out the sorrows of his heavy heart, praying to be made brave.

But why, oh! why, he wondered, rising from his knees, had the good God seen fit to make him that strange and terrible thing, a French boy?