Chapter IV

Little Lord Fauntleroy

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

It was during the voyage that Cedric's mother told him that his
home was not to be hers; and when he first understood it, his grief
was so great that Mr. Havisham saw that the Earl had been wise in
making the arrangements that his mother should be quite near him, and
see him often; for it was very plain he could not have borne the
separation otherwise. But his mother managed the little fellow so
sweetly and lovingly, and made him feel that she would be so near
him, that, after a while, he ceased to be oppressed by the fear of
any real parting.

"My house is not far from the Castle, Ceddie," she repeated each
time the subject was referred to--"a very little way from yours, and
you can always run in and see me every day, and you will have so many
things to tell me! and we shall be so happy together! It is a
beautiful place. Your papa has often told me about it. He loved it
very much; and you will love it too."

"I should love it better if you were there," his small lordship
said, with a heavy little sigh.

He could not but feel puzzled by so strange a state of affairs,
which could put his "Dearest" in one house and himself in another.

The fact was that Mrs. Errol had thought it better not to tell
him why this plan had been made.

"I should prefer he should not be told," she said to Mr.
Havisham. "He would not really understand; he would only be shocked
and hurt; and I feel sure that his feeling for the Earl will be a
more natural and affectionate one if he does not know that his
grandfather dislikes me so bitterly. He has never seen hatred or
hardness, and it would be a great blow to him to find out that any
one could hate me. He is so loving himself, and I am so dear to him!
It is better for him that he should not be told until he is much
older, and it is far better for the Earl. It would make a barrier
between them, even though Ceddie is such a child."

So Cedric only knew that there was some mysterious reason for
the arrangement, some reason which he was not old enough to
understand, but which would be explained when he was older. He was
puzzled; but, after all, it was not the reason he cared about so
much; and after many talks with his mother, in which she comforted
him and placed before him the bright side of the picture, the dark
side of it gradually began to fade out, though now and then Mr.
Havisham saw him sitting in some queer little old-fashioned attitude,
watching the sea, with a very grave face, and more than once he heard
an unchildish sigh rise to his lips.

"I don't like it," he said once as he was having one of his
almost venerable talks with the lawyer. "You don't know how much I
don't like it; but there are a great many troubles in this world, and
you have to bear them. Mary says so, and I've heard Mr. Hobbs say it
too. And Dearest wants me to like to live with my grandpapa,
because, you see, all his children are dead, and that's very
mournful. It makes you sorry for a man, when all his children have
died--and one was killed suddenly."

One of the things which always delighted the people who made the
acquaintance of his young lordship was the sage little air he wore at
times when he gave himself up to conversation;--combined with his
occasionally elderly remarks and the extreme innocence and
seriousness of his round childish face, it was irresistible. He was
such a handsome, blooming, curly-headed little fellow, that, when he
sat down and nursed his knee with his chubby hands, and conversed
with much gravity, he was a source of great entertainment to his
hearers. Gradually Mr. Havisham had begun to derive a great deal of
private pleasure and amusement from his society.

"And so you are going to try to like the Earl," he said.

"Yes," answered his lordship. "He's my relation, and of course
you have to like your relations; and besides, he's been very kind to
me. When a person does so many things for you, and wants you to have
everything you wish for, of course you'd like him if he wasn't your
relation; but when he's your relation and does that, why, you're very
fond of him."

"Do you think," suggested Mr. Havisham, "that he will be fond of
you?"

"Well," said Cedric, "I think he will, because, you see, I'm his
relation, too, and I'm his boy's little boy besides, and, well, don't
you see--of course he must be fond of me now, or he wouldn't want me
to have everything that I like, and he wouldn't have sent you for
me."

"Oh!" remarked the lawyer, "that's it, is it?"

"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 every one seemed to know
the romantic story of little Lord Fauntleroy, and every one 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.
Every one 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 center; 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 conversation had, indeed, quite a nautical
flavor 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
sea-faring 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 again after that 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 hair-brush. 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 fervor,
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 drive-way under great arching trees, and after
the carriage had rolled down this drive-way 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 door-way.

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 rumors 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 hearth-rug.

"It was the house-kaper 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 every one, 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 arm-chair 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 to-night?" she said. "He will stay with me
to-night?"

"Yes," answered Mr. Havisham in the same low tone; "it will not
be necessary for him to go to-night. 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 can not 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 afterward.

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 pretense 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 to-night. To-morrow 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 a 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.

"Straight-limbed and well enough to look at?" demanded the
Earl.

A very slight smile touched Mr. Havisham's thin lips. There
rose up before his mind's eye the picture he had left at Court
Lodge,--the beautiful, graceful child's body lying upon the
tiger-skin in careless comfort--the bright, tumbled hair spread on
the rug--the bright, rosy boy's face.

"Rather a handsome boy, I think, my lord, as boys go," he said,
"though I am scarcely a judge, perhaps. But you will find him
somewhat different from most English children, I dare say."

"I haven't a doubt of that," snarled the Earl, a twinge of gout
seizing him. "A lot of impudent little beggars, those American
children; I've heard that often enough."

"It is not exactly impudence in his case," said Mr. Havisham.
"I can scarcely describe what the difference is. He has lived more
with older people than with children, and the difference seems to be
a mixture of maturity and childishness."

"American impudence!" protested the Earl. "I've heard of it
before. They call it precocity and freedom. Beastly, impudent bad
manners; that's what it is!"

Mr. Havisham drank some more port. He seldom argued with his
lordly patron,--never when his lordly patron's noble leg was inflamed
by gout. At such times it was always better to leave him alone. So
there was a silence of a few moments. It was Mr. Havisham who broke
it.

"I have a message to deliver from Mrs. Errol," he remarked.

"I don't want any of her messages!" growled his lordship; "the
less I hear of her the better."

"This is a rather important one," explained the lawyer. "She
prefers not to accept the income you proposed to settle on her."

The Earl started visibly.

"What's that?" he cried out. "What's that?"

Mr. Havisham repeated his words.

"She says it is not necessary, and that as the relations between
you are not friendly----"

"Not friendly!" ejaculated my lord savagely; "I should say they
were not friendly! I hate to think of her! A mercenary,
sharp-voiced American! I don't wish to see her."

"My lord," said Mr. Havisham, "you can scarcely call her
mercenary. She has asked for nothing. She does not accept the money
you offer her."

"All done for effect!" snapped his noble lordship. "She wants
to wheedle me into seeing her. She thinks I shall admire her spirit.
I don't admire it! It's only American independence! I won't have
her living like a beggar at my park gates. As she's the boy's
mother, she has a position to keep up, and she shall keep it up. She
shall have the money, whether she likes it or not!"

"She won't spend it," said Mr. Havisham.

"I don't care whether she spends it or not!" blustered my lord.
"She shall have it sent to her. She sha'n't tell people that she has
to live like a pauper because I have done nothing for her! She wants
to give the boy a bad opinion of me! I suppose she has poisoned his
mind against me already!"

"No," said Mr. Havisham. "I have another message, which will
prove to you that she has not done that."

"I don't want to hear it!" panted the Earl, out of breath with
anger and excitement and gout.

But Mr. Havisham delivered it.

"She asks you not to let Lord Fauntleroy hear anything which
would lead him to understand that you separate him from her because
of your prejudice against her. He is very fond of her, and she is
convinced that it would cause a barrier to exist between you. She
says he would not comprehend it, and it might make him fear you in
some measure, or at least cause him to feel less affection for you.
She has told him that he is too young to understand the reason, but
shall hear it when he is older. She wishes that there should be no
shadow on your first meeting."

The Earl sank back into his chair. His deep-set fierce old eyes
gleamed under his beetling brows.

"Come, now!" he said, still breathlessly. "Come, now! You
don't mean the mother hasn't told him?"

"Not one word, my lord," replied the lawyer coolly. "That I can
assure you. The child is prepared to believe you the most amiable
and affectionate of grandparents. Nothing--absolutely nothing has
been said to him to give him the slightest doubt of your perfection.
And as I carried out your commands in every detail, while in New
York, he certainly regards you as a wonder of generosity."

"He does, eh?" said the Earl.

"I give you my word of honor," said Mr. Havisham, "that Lord
Fauntleroy's impressions of you will depend entirely upon yourself.
And if you will pardon the liberty I take in making the suggestion, I
think you will succeed better with him if you take the precaution not
to speak slightingly of his mother."

"Pooh, pooh!" said the Earl. "The youngster is only seven years
old!"

"He has spent those seven years at his mother's side," returned
Mr. Havisham; "and she has all his affection."