That Boy Of Norcott's

He motioned me to withdraw, but I could not bear to go till he had withdrawn the slur he had cast on me in the word coward. He looked at me steadfastly, but not harshly, for a moment or two, and then said, —

“You are not to think that it is out of regret for a lost sum of money I have read you this lecture. As to the wager itself, I am as well pleased that it ended as it did. These gentlemen are not rich, either of them. I can afford the loss. What I cannot afford is the way I lost it.”

“But will you not say, sir, that I am no coward?” said I, faltering.

“I will withdraw the word,” said he, slowly, “the very first time I shall see you deal with a difficulty without a thought for what it may cost you. There; good-night; leave me now. I mean to have a ride with you in the morning.”

And he nodded twice, and smiled, and dismissed me.

There was nothing, certainly, very flattering to me in this reception. It cost me dearly while it lasted, and yet – I cannot explain why – I came away with a feeling of affection for my father, and a desire to stand well in his esteem, such as I had not experienced till that moment. It was his utter indifference up to this that had chilled and repelled me. Any show of interest, anything that might evidence that he cared what I was or what I might become, was so much better than this apathy that I welcomed the change with delight. Accustomed to the tender solicitude of a loving mother, no niggard of her praise, and more given to sympathize than blame, the stern reserve of my father’s manner had been a terrible reverse, and over and over had I asked myself why he took me from where I was loved and cherished, to live this life of ceremonious observance and cold deference.

To know that he felt even such interest in me as this, was to restore me to self-esteem at once. He would not have his son a coward, he said; and as I felt in my heart that I was not a coward, as I knew I was ready then and there to confront any peril he could propose to me, all that the speech left in my memory was a sense of self-satisfaction.

In each of the letters I had received from my mother she impressed on me how important it was that I should win my father’s affection, and now a hope flashed across me that I might do this. I sat down to tell her all that had passed between us; but somehow, in recounting the incident of the billiard-room, I wandered away into a description of the house, its splendors and luxury, and of the life of costly pleasure that we were living. “You will ask, dearest mamma,” I wrote, “how and when I find time to study amidst all these dissipations? and I grieve to own that I do very little. Mr. Eccles says he is satisfied with me; but I fear it is more because I obtrude little on his notice than that I am making any progress. We are still in the same scene of the Adrian that I began with you; and as to the Greek, we leave it over for Saturdays, and the Saturdays get skipped. I have become a good shot with the rifle; and George says I have the finest, lightest hand he knows on a horse, and that he ‘ll make me yet a regular steeple-chase horseman. I have a passion for riding, and sometimes get four mounts on a day. Indeed, papa takes no interest in the stable, and I give all the orders, and can have a team harnessed for me – which I do – when I am tired with the saddle. They have not quite given up calling me ‘that boy of Norcott’s;’ only now, when they do so, it is to say how well he rides, and what a taste he shows for driving and shooting.

“Don’t be afraid that I am neglecting my music. I play every day, and take singing lessons with an Italian: they call him the Count Guastalla; but I believe he is the tenor of the opera here, and only teaches me out of compliment to papa. He dines here nearly every day, and plays piquet with papa all the evening.

“There is a very beautiful lady comes here, – Madame Cleremont. She is the wife of the Secretary to the Legation. She is French, and has such pleasing ways, and is so gay, and so good-natured, and so fond of gratifying me in every way, that I delight in being with her; and we ride out together constantly, and I am now teaching her to drive the ponies, and she enjoys it just as I used myself. I don’t think papa likes her, for he seldom speaks to her, and never takes her in to dinner if there is another lady in the room; and I suspect she feels this, for she is often very sad. I dislike Mr. Cleremont; he is always saying snappish things, and is never happy, no matter how merry we are. But papa seems to like him best of all the people here. Old Captain Hotham and I are great friends, though he’s always saying, ‘You ought to be at sea, youngster. This sort of life will only make a blackleg of you.’ But I can’t make out why, because I am very happy and have so much to interest and amuse me, I must become a scamp. Mdme. Cleremont says, too, it is not true; that papa is bringing me up exactly as he ought, that I will enter life as a gentleman, and not be passing the best years of my existence in learning the habits of the well-bred world. They fight bitterly over this every day; but she always gets the victory, and then kisses me, and says, ‘Mon cher petit Digby, I ‘ll not have you spoiled, to please any vulgar prejudice of a tiresome old sea-captain,’ This she whispers, for she would not offend him for anything. Dear mamma, how you would love her if you knew her! I believe I ‘m to go to Rugby to school; but I hope not, for how I shall live like a schoolboy after all this happiness I don’t know; and Mdme. Cleremont says she will never permit it; but she has no influence over papa, and how could she prevent it? Captain Hotham is always saying, ‘If Norcott does not send that boy to Harrow or Rugby, or some of these places, he ‘ll graduate in the Marshalsea – that’s a prison – before he’s twenty.’ I am so glad when a day passes without my being brought up for the subject of a discussion, which papa always ends with, ‘After all I was neither an Etonian nor Rugbeian, and I suspect I can hold my own with most men; and if that boy doesn’t belie his breeding, perhaps he may do so too.’

“Nobody likes contradicting papa, especially when he says anything in a certain tone of voice, and whenever he uses this, the conversation turns away to something else.

“I forgot to say in my last, that your letters always come regularly. They arrive with papa’s, and he sends them up to me at once, by his valet, Mons. Durand, who is always so nicely dressed, and has a handsomer watch-chain than papa.

“Mdme. Cleremont said yesterday: ‘I’m so sorry not to know your dear mamma, Digby: but if I dared, I’d send her so many caresses, de ma part.’ I said nothing at the time, but I send them now, and am your loving son,

“Digby Norcott.”

This letter was much longer than it appears here. It filled several sides of note-paper, and occupied me till daybreak. Indeed, I heard the bell ringing for the workmen as I closed it, and shortly after a gentle tap came to my door, and George Spunner, our head groom, entered.

“I saw you at the window, Master Digby,” said he, “and I thought I’d step up and tell you not to ride in spurs this morning. Sir Roger wants to see you on May Blossom, and you know she’s a hot ‘un, sir, and don’t want the steel. Indeed, if she feels the boot, she’s as much as a man can do to sit.”

“You ‘re a good fellow, George, to think of this,” said I. “Do you know where we ‘re going?”

“That’s what I was going to tell you, sir. We are going to the Bois de Cambre, and there’s two of our men gone on with hurdles, to set them up in the cross alleys of the wood, and we ‘re to come on ‘em unawares, you see.”

“Then why don’t you give me Father Tom or Hunger-ford?”

“The master would n’t have either. He said, ‘A child of five years old could ride the Irish horse;’ and as for Hungerford, he calls him a circus horse.”

“But who knows if Blossom will take a fence?”

“I’ll warrant she’ll go high enough; how she’ll come down, and where, is another matter. Only don’t you go a-pullin’ at her, ride her in the snaffle, and as light as you can. Face her straight at what she’s got to go over, and let her choose her own pace.”

“I declare I don’t see how this is a fair trial of my riding, George. Do you?”

“Well, it is, and it isn’t,” said he, scratching his head. “You might have a very tidy hand and a nice seat, and not be able to ride the mare; but then, sir, you see, if you have the judgment to manage her coolly, and not rouse her temper too far, if you can bring her to a fence, and make her take off at a proper distance, and fly it, never changing her stride nor balk, why then he’ll see you can ride.”

“And if she rushes, or comes with her chest to a bank, or if – as I think she will – she refuses her fence, rears, and falls back, what then?”

“Then I think the mornin’s sport will be pretty nigh over,” growled he; as though I had suggested something personally offensive to him.

“What time do we go, George?”

“Sir Roger said seven, sir, but that will be eight or half-past. He’s to drive over to the wood, and the horses are to meet him there.”

“All right. I’ll take a short sleep and be sharp to time.”

As he left the room, I tore open my letter, to add a few words. I thought I’d say something that, if mischance befell me, might be a comfort to my dear mother to read over and dwell on, but for the life of me I did not know how to do it, without exciting alarm or awakening her to the dread of some impending calamity. Were I to say, I ‘m off for a ride with papa, it meant nothing; and if I said, I ‘m going to show him how I can manage a very hot horse, it might keep her in an agony of suspense till I wrote again.

So I merely added, “I intend to write to you very soon again, and hope I may do so within the week.” These few commonplace words had a great meaning to my mind, however little they might convey to her I wrote them to; and as I read them over, I stored them with details supplied by imagination, – details so full of incident and catastrophe that they made a perfect story. After this I lay down and slept heavily.

CHAPTER VIII. A DARK-ROOM PICTURE

Mr next letter to my mother was very short, and ran thus: —

“Dearest Mamma, – Don’t be shocked at my bad writing, for I had a fall on Tuesday last, and hurt my arm a little; nothing broken, but bruised and sore to move, so that I lie on my bed and read novels. Madame never leaves me, but sits here to put ice on my shoulder and play chess with me. She reads out Balzac for me, and I don’t know when I had such a jolly life. It was a rather big hurdle, and the mare took it sideways, and caught her hind leg, – at least they say so, – but we came down together, and she rolled over me. Papa cried out well done, for I did not lose my saddle, and he has given me a gold watch and a seal with the Norcott crest. Every one is so kind; and Captain Hotham comes up after dinner and tells me all the talk of the table, and we smoke and have our coffee very nicely.

“Papa comes every night before supper, and is very good to me. He says that Blossom is now my own, but I must teach her to come cooler to her fences. I can’t write more, for my pain comes back when I stir my arm. You shall hear of me constantly, if I cannot write myself.

“Oh, dearest mamma, when papa is kind there is no one like him, – so gentle, so thoughtful, so soft in manner, and so dignified all the while. I wish you could see him as he stood here. A thousand loves from your own boy,

“DIGBY.”

Madame Cleremont wrote by the same post. I did not see her letter; but when mamma’s answer came I knew it must have been a serious version of my accident, and told how, besides a dislocated shoulder, I had got a broken collar-bone, and two ribs fractured. With all this, however, there was no danger to life; for the doctor said everything had gone luckily, and no internal parts were wounded.

Poor mamma had added a postscript that puzzled Madame greatly, and she came and showed it to me, and asked what I thought she could do about it. It was an entreaty that she might be permitted to come and see me. There was a touching humility in the request that almost choked me with emotion as I read it. “I could come and go unknown and unnoticed,” wrote she. “None of Sir Roger’s household have ever seen me, and my visit might pass for the devotion of some old follower of the family, and I will promise not to repeat it.” She urged her plea in the most beseeching terms, and said that she would submit to any conditions if her prayer were only complied with.

“I really do not know what to do here,” said Madame to me. “Without your father’s concurrence this cannot be done; and who is to ask him for permission?”

“Shall I?”

“No, no, no,” cried she, rapidly. “Such a step on your part would be ruin; a certain refusal, and ruin to yourself.”

“Could Mr. Eccles do it?”

“He has no influence whatever.”

“Has Captain Hotham?”

“Less, if less be possible.”

“Mr. Cleremont, then?”

“Ah, yes, he might, and with a better chance of success; but – ” She stopped, and though I waited patiently, she did not finish her sentence.

“But what?” asked I at last.

“Gaston hates doing a hazardous thing,” said she; and I remarked that her expression changed, and her face assumed a hard, stern look as she spoke. “His theory is, do nothing without three to one in your favor. He says you ‘ll always gets these odds, if you only wait.”

“But you don’t believe that,” cried I, eagerly.

“Sometimes – very seldom, that is, I do not whenever I can help it.” There was a long pause now, in which neither of us spoke. At last she said, “I can’t aid your mother in this project. She must give it up. There is no saying how your father would resent it.”

“And how will you tell her that?” faltered I out.

“I can’t tell. I’ll try and show her the mischief it might bring upon you; and that now, standing high, as you do, in your father’s favor, she would never forgive herself, if she were the cause of a change towards you. This consideration will have more weight with her than any that could touch herself personally.”

“But it shall not,” cried I, passionately. “Nothing in my fortune shall stand between my mother and her love for me.”

She bent down and looked at me with an intensity in her stare that I cannot describe; it was as if, by actual steadfastness, she was able to fix me, and read me in my inmost heart.

“From which of your parents, Digby,” said she, slowly, “do you derive this nature?”

“I do not know; papa always says I am very like him.”

“And do you believe that papa is capable of great self-sacrifice? I mean, would he let his affections lead him against his interests?”

“That he would! He has told me over and over the head is as often wrong as right, – the heart only errs about once in five times.” She fell on my neck and kissed me as I said this, with a sort of rapturous delight. “Your heart will be always right, dear boy,” said she; once more she bent down and kissed me, and then hurried away.

This scene must have worked more powerfully on my nerves than I felt, or was aware of, while it was passing; at all events, it brought back my fever, and before night I was in wild delirium. Of the seven long weeks that followed, with all their alternations, I know nothing. My first consciousness was to know myself, as very weak and propped by pillows, in a half-darkened room, in which an old nurse-tender sat and mingled her heavy snorings with the ticking of the clock on the chimney. Thus drowsily pondering, with a debilitated brain, I used to fancy that I had passed away into another form of existence, in which no sights or sounds should come but these dreary breathings, and that remorseless ticking that seemed to be spelling out “eternity.”

Sometimes one, sometimes two or three persons would enter the room, approach the bed, and talk together in whispers, and I would languidly lift up my eyes and look at them, and though I thought they were not altogether unknown to me, the attempt at recognition would have been an effort so full of pain that I would, rather than make it, fall back again into apathy. The first moment of perfect consciousness – when I could easily follow all that I heard, and remember it afterwards – was one evening, when a faint but delicious air came in through the open window, and the rich fragrance of the garden filled the room. Captain Hotham and the doctor were seated on the balcony smoking and chatting.

“You ‘re sure the tobacco won’t be bad for him?” asked Hotham.

“Nothing will be bad or good now,” was the answer. “Effusion has set in.”

“Which means, that it’s all over, eh?”

“About one in a thousand, perhaps, rub through. My own experience records no instance of recovery.”

“And you certainly did not take such a gloomy view of his case at first. You told me that there were no vital parts touched?”

“Neither were there; the ribs had suffered no displacement, and as for a broken clavicle, I ‘ve known a fellow get up and finish his race after it This boy was doing famously. I don’t know that I ever saw a case going on better, when some of them here – it’s not easy to say whom – sent off for his mother to come and see him. Of course, without Norcott’s knowledge. It was a rash thing to do, and not well done either; for when the woman arrived, there was no preparation made, either with the boy or herself, for their meeting; and the result was that when she crossed the threshold and saw him she fainted away. The youngster tried to get to her and fainted too; a great hubbub and noise followed; and Norcott himself appeared. The scene that ensued must have been, from what I heard, terrific. He either ordered the woman out of the house, or he dragged her away, – it’s not easy to say which; but it is quite clear that he went absolutely mad with passion: some say that he told them to pack off the boy along with her, but, of course, this was sheer impossibility; the boy was insensible, and has been so ever since.”

“I was at Namur that day, but they told me when I came back that Cleremont’s wife had behaved so well; that she had the courage to face Norcott; and though I don’t believe she did much by her bravery, she drove him off the field to his own room, and when his wife did leave the house for the railroad, it was in one of Norcott’s carriages, and Madame herself accompanied her.”

“Is she his wife? that’s the question.”

“There’s not a doubt of it. Blenkworth of the Grays was at the wedding.

“If I were to be examined before a commission of lunacy to-morrow,” said the doctor, solemnly, “I ‘d call that man insane.”

“And you’d shut him up?”

“I’d shut him up!”

“Then I ‘m precious glad you are not called on to give an opinion, for you ‘d shut up the best house in this quarter of Europe.”

“And what security have you any moment that he won’t make a clean sweep of it, and turn you all into the streets?”

“Yes; that’s on the cards any day.”

“He must have got through almost everything he had; besides, I never heard his property called six thousand a year, and I ‘ll swear twelve wouldn’t pay his way here.”

“What does he care! His father and he agreed to cut off the entail; and seeing the sort of marriage he made, he ‘ll not fret much at leaving the boy a beggar.”

“But he likes him; if there’s anything in the world he cares for, it’s that boy!”

The other must have made some gesture of doubt or dissent, for the doctor quickly added, “No, no, I ‘m right about that. It was only yesterday morning he said to me with a shake in the voice there’s no mistaking, ‘If you can come and tell me, doctor, that he’s out of danger, I ‘ll give you a thousand pounds.’”

“Egad, I think I ‘d have done it, even though I might have made a blunder.”

“Ye ‘re no a doctor, sir, that’s plain;” and in the emotion of the moment he spoke the words with a strong Scotch accent.

There was a silence of some minutes, and Hotham said, “That little Frenchwoman and I have no love lost between us, but I ‘m glad she cut up so well.”

“They ‘re strange natures, there ‘s no denying it They ‘ll do less from duty and more from impulse than any people in the world, and they ‘re never thoroughly proud of themselves except when they ‘re all wrong.”

“That’s a neat character for Frenchwomen,” said Hotham, laughing.

“I think Norcott will be looking out for his whist by this time,” said the other; and they both arose, and passing noiselessly through the room, moved away.

I had enough left me to think over, and I did think over it till I fell asleep.

CHAPTER IX. MADAME CLEREMONT

From that day forth I received no tidings of my mother. Whether my own letters reached her or not, I could not tell; and though I entreated Madame Cleremont, who was now my confidante in everything, to aid me in learning where my mother was, she declared that the task was beyond her; and at last, as time went over, my anxieties became blunted and my affections dulled. The life I was leading grew to have such a hold upon me, and was so full of its own varied interests, that – with shame I say it – I actually forgot the very existence of her to whom I owed any trace of good or honest or truthful that was in me.

The house in which I was living was a finishing school for every sort of dissipation, and all who frequented it were people who only lived for pleasure. Play of the highest kind went on unceasingly, and large sums were bandied about from hand to hand as carelessly as if all were men of fortune and indifferent to heavy losses.

A splendid mode of living, sumptuous dinners, a great retinue, and perfect liberty to the guests, drew around us that class who, knowing well that they have no other occupation than self-indulgence, throw an air of languid elegance over vice, which your vulgar sinner, who has only intervals of wickedness, knows nothing of; and this, be it said passingly, is, of all sections of society, the most seductive and dangerous to the young: for there are no outrages to taste amongst these people, they violate no decencies, they shock no principles. If they smash the tables of the law, it is in kid-gloves, and with a delicious odor of Ess bouquet about them. The Cleremonts lived at the Villa. Cleremont managed the household, and gave the orders for everything. Madame received the company, and did the honors; my father lounging about like an unoccupied guest, and actually amused, as it seemed, by his own unimportance. Hotham had gone to sea; but Eccles remained, in name, as my tutor; but we rarely met, save at meal-times, and his manner to me was almost slavish in subserviency, and with a habit of flattery that, even young as I was, revolted me.

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