Little Lord Fauntleroy

‘Yes,’ said Cedric, ‘that’s it. Don’t you think that’s it too? Of course a man would be fond of his grandson.’

The people who had been seasick had no sooner recovered from their seasickness, and come on deck to recline in their steamer chairs and enjoy themselves, than everyone seemed to know the romantic story of little Lord Fauntleroy, and everyone took an interest in the little fellow, who ran about the ship or walked with his mother or the tall, thin old lawyer, or talked to the sailors. Everyone liked him; he made friends everywhere. He was ever ready to make friends. When the gentlemen walked up and down the deck, and let him walk with them, he stepped out with a manly, sturdy little tramp, and answered all their jokes with much gay enjoyment; when the ladies talked to him there was always laughter in the group of which he was the centre; when he played with the children there was always magnificent fun on hand. Among the sailors he had the heartiest friends; he heard miraculous stories about pirates and shipwrecks and desert islands; he learned to splice ropes and rig toy ships, and gained an amount of information concerning ‘tops’ls’ and ‘mains’ls’, quite surprising. His conversations had indeed quite a nautical flavour at times, and on one occasion he raised a shout of laughter in a group of ladies and gentlemen who were sitting on deck, wrapped in shawls and overcoats, by saying sweetly, and with a very engaging expression:

‘Shiver my timbers, but it’s a cold day!’

It surprised him when they laughed. He had picked up this seafaring remark from an ‘elderly naval man’ of the name of Jerry, who told him stories in which it occurred frequently. To judge from his stories of his own adventures, Jerry had made some two or three thousand voyages, and had been invariably shipwrecked on each occasion on an island densely populated with bloodthirsty cannibals. Judging also by these same exciting adventures, he had been partially roasted and eaten frequently and had been scalped some fifteen or twenty times.

‘That is why he is so bald,’ explained Lord Fauntleroy to his mamma. ‘After you have been scalped several times the hair never grows again. Jerry’s never grew after the last time, when the King of the Parromachaweekins did it with the knife made out of the skull of the Chief of the Wopslemumpkies. He says it was one of the most serious times he ever had. He was so frightened that his hair stood right straight up when the king flourished his knife, and it never would lie down, and the king wears it that way now, and it looks something like a hairbrush. I never heard anything like the asperiences Jerry has had! I should so like to tell Mr Hobbs about them!’

Sometimes, when the weather was very disagreeable and people were kept below decks in the saloon, a party of his grown-up friends would persuade him to tell them some of these ‘asperiences’ of Jerry’s, and, as he sat relating them with great delight and fervour, there was certainly no more popular voyager on any ocean steamer crossing the Atlantic than little Lord Fauntleroy. He was always innocently and good-naturedly ready to do his small best to add to the general entertainment, and there was a charm in the very unconsciousness of his own childish importance.

‘Jerry’s stories int’rust them very much,’ he said to his mamma. ‘For my part – you must excuse me, Dearest – but sometimes I should have thought they couldn’t be all quite true, if they hadn’t happened to Jerry himself; but as they all happened to Jerry – well, it’s very strange, you know, and perhaps sometimes he may forget and be a little mistaken, as he’s been scalped so often. Being scalped a great many times might make a person forgetful.’

It was eleven days after he had said good-bye to his friend Dick before he reached Liverpool; and it was on the night of the twelfth day that the carriage, in which he and his mother and Mr Havisham had driven from the station, stopped before the gates of Court Lodge. They could not see much of the house in the darkness. Cedric only saw that there was a carriage drive under great arching trees, and after the carriage had rolled down this carriage drive a short distance, he saw an open door and a stream of bright light coming through it.

Mary had come with them to attend her mistress, and she had reached the house before them. When Cedric jumped out of the carriage he saw one or two servants standing in the wide bright hall, and Mary stood in the doorway.

Lord Fauntleroy sprang at her with a gay little shout.

‘Did you get here, Mary?’ he said. ‘Here’s Mary, Dearest,’ and he kissed the maid on her rough red cheek.

‘I am glad you are here, Mary,’ Mrs Errol said to her in a low voice. ‘It is such a comfort to me to see you. It takes the strangeness away.’ And she held out her little hand, which Mary squeezed encouragingly. She knew how this first ‘strangeness’ must feel to this little mother who had left her own land and was about to give up her child.

The English servants looked with curiosity at both the boy and his mother. They had heard all sorts of rumours about them both; they knew how angry the old Earl had been, and why Mrs Errol was to live at the Lodge and her little boy at the Castle; they knew all about the great fortune he was to inherit and about the savage old grandfather and his gout and his tempers.

‘He’ll have no easy time of it, poor little chap,’ they had said among themselves.

But they did not know what sort of a little lord had come among them; they did not quite understand the character of the next Earl of Dorincourt.

He pulled off his overcoat quite as if he were used to doing things for himself, and began to look about him. He looked about the broad hall, at the pictures and stags’ antlers and curious things that ornamented it. They seemed curious to him because he had never seen such things before in a private house.

‘Dearest,’ he said, ‘this is a very pretty house, isn’t it? I am glad you are going to live here. It’s quite a large house.’

It was quite a large house compared to the one in the shabby New York street, and it was very pretty and cheerful. Mary led them upstairs to a bright chintz-hung bedroom where a fire was burning, and a large snow-white Persian cat was sleeping luxuriously on the white fur hearthrug.

‘It was the housekaper up at the Castle, ma’am, sint her to yez,’ explained Mary. ‘It’s herself is a kind-hearted lady an’ has had iverything done to prepar’ fur yez. I seen her meself a few minnits, an’ she was fond av the Capt’in, ma’am, an’ graivs fur him; and she said to say the big cat slapin’ on the rug moight make the room same homeloike to yez. She knowed Capt’in Errol whin he was a bye – an’ a foine handsum’ bye she ses he was, an’ a foine young man wid a plisint word fur everyone, great an’ shmall. An’ ses I to her, ses I, “He’s lift a bye that’s loike him, ma’am, fur a foiner little felly niver sthipped in shoe-leather”.’

When they were ready they went downstairs into another big bright room; its ceiling was low, and the furniture was heavy and beautifully carved, the chairs were deep and had high massive backs, and there were queer shelves and cabinets with strange, pretty ornaments on them. There was a great tiger-skin before the fire, and an armchair on each side of it. The stately white cat had responded to Lord Fauntleroy’s stroking and followed him downstairs, and when he threw himself down upon the rug she curled herself up grandly beside him as if she intended to make friends. Cedric was so pleased that he put his head down by hers, and lay stroking her, not noticing what his mother and Mr Havisham were saying.

They were indeed speaking in a rather low tone. Mrs Errol looked a little pale and agitated.

‘He need not go tonight?’ she said. ‘He will stay with me tonight?’

‘Yes,’ answered Mr Havisham in the same low tone; ‘it will not be necessary for him to go tonight. I myself will go to the Castle as soon as we have dined, and inform the Earl of our arrival.’

Mrs Errol glanced down at Cedric. He was lying in a graceful, careless attitude upon the black-and-yellow skin; the fire shone on his handsome, flushed little face, and on the tumbled, curly hair spread out on the rug; the big cat was purring in drowsy content; she liked the caressing touch of the kind little hand on her fur.

Mrs Errol smiled faintly.

‘His lordship does not know all that he is taking from me,’ she said rather sadly. Then she looked at the lawyer. ‘Will you tell him, if you please,’ she said, ‘that I should rather not have the money?’

‘The money!’ Mr Havisham exclaimed. ‘You cannot mean the income he proposed to settle upon you?’

‘Yes,’ she answered quite simply; ‘I think I should rather not have it. I am obliged to accept the house, and I thank him for it, because it makes it possible for me to be near my child; but I have a little money of my own – enough to live simply upon – and I should rather not take the other, as he dislikes me so much I should feel a little as if I were selling Cedric to him. I am giving him up only because I love him enough to forget myself for his good, and because his father would wish it to be so.’

Mr Havisham rubbed his chin.

‘This is very strange,’ he said. ‘He will be very angry. He won’t understand it.’

‘I think he will understand it after he thinks it over,’ she said. ‘I do not really need the money, and why should I accept luxuries from the man who hates me so much that he takes my little boy from me – his son’s child?’

Mr Havisham looked reflective for a few moments.

‘I will deliver your message,’ he said afterwards.

And then the dinner was brought in and they sat down together, the big cat taking a seat on a chair near Cedric’s and purring majestically throughout the meal.

When, later in the evening, Mr Havisham presented himself at the Castle, he was taken at once to the Earl. He found him sitting by the fire in a luxurious easy chair, his foot on a gout-stool. He looked at the lawyer sharply from under his shaggy eyebrows, but Mr Havisham could see that, in spite of his pretence at calmness, he was nervous and secretly excited.

‘Well,’ he said; ‘well, Havisham, come back, have you? What’s the news?’

‘Lord Fauntleroy and his mother are at Court Lodge,’ replied Mr Havisham. ‘They bore the voyage very well and are in excellent health.’

The Earl made a half-impatient sound and moved his hand restlessly.

‘Glad to hear it,’ he said brusquely. ‘So far, so good. Make yourself comfortable. Have a glass of wine and settle down. What else?’

‘His lordship remains with his mother tonight. Tomorrow I will bring him to the Castle.’

The Earl’s elbow was resting on the arm of his chair; he put his hand up and shielded his eyes with it.

‘Well?’ he said; ‘go on. You know I told you not to write to me about the matter, and I know nothing whatever about it. What kind of a lad is he? I don’t care about the mother; what sort of lad is he?’

Mr Havisham drank a little of the glass of port he had poured out for himself, and sat holding it in his hand.

‘It is rather difficult to judge of the character of a child of seven,’ he said cautiously.

The Earl’s prejudices were very intense. He looked up quickly and uttered a rough word.

‘A fool, is he?’ he exclaimed. ‘Or a clumsy cub? His American blood tells, does it?’

‘I do not think it has injured him, my lord,’ replied the lawyer in his dry, deliberate fashion. ‘I don’t know much about children, but I thought him rather a fine lad.’

His manner of speech was always deliberate and unenthusiastic, but he made it a trifle more so than usual. He had a shrewd fancy that it would be better that the Earl should judge for himself, and be quite unprepared for his first interview with his grandson.

‘Healthy and well grown?’ asked my lord.

‘Apparently very healthy, and quite well grown,’ replied the lawyer.