"You"re a liar--a young liar," said Harry, with great unction, "and you"re to have tea down here because you"re not fit to speak to us.
And you"re not to speak to Judy again till Mother gives you leave.
You"ll corrupt her. You"re only fit to a.s.sociate with the servant.
Mother says so."
Having reduced Punch to a second agony of tears Harry departed upstairs with the news that Punch was still rebellious.
Uncle Harry sat uneasily in the dining-room. "D---- it all, Rosa,"
said he at last, "can"t you leave the child alone? He"s a good enough little chap when I meet him."
"He puts on his best manners with you, Henry," said Aunty Rosa, "but I"m afraid, I"m very much afraid, that he is the Black Sheep of the family."
Harry heard and stored up the name for future use. Judy cried till she was bidden to stop, her brother not being worth tears; and the evening concluded with the return of Punch to the upper regions and a private sitting at which all the blinding horrors of h.e.l.l were revealed to Punch with such store of imagery as Aunty Rosa"s narrow mind possessed.
Most grievous of all was Judy"s round-eyed reproach, and Punch went to bed in the depths of the Valley of Humiliation. He shared his room with Harry and knew the torture in store. For an hour and a half he had to answer that young gentleman"s question as to his motives for telling a lie, and a grievous lie, the precise quant.i.ty of punishment inflicted by Aunty Rosa, and had also to profess his deep grat.i.tude for such religious instruction as Harry thought fit to impart.
From that day began the downfall of Punch, now Black Sheep.
"Untrustworthy in one thing, untrustworthy in all," said Aunty Rosa, and Harry felt that Black Sheep was delivered into his hands. He would wake him up in the night to ask him why he was such a liar.
"I don"t know," Punch would reply.
"Then don"t you think you ought to get up and pray to G.o.d for a new heart?"
"Y-yess."
"Get out and pray, then!" And Punch would get out of bed with raging hate in his heart against all the world, seen and unseen. He was always tumbling into trouble. Harry had a knack of cross-examining him as to his day"s doings, which seldom failed to lead him, sleepy and savage, into half a dozen contradictions--all duly reported to Aunty Rosa next morning.
"But it was n"t a lie," Punch would begin, charging into a laboured explanation that landed him more hopelessly in the mire. "I said that I did n"t say my prayers twice over in the day, and that was on Tuesday. Once I did, I know I did, but Harry said I did n"t," and so forth, till the tension brought tears, and he was dismissed from the table in disgrace.
"You use n"t to be as bad as this?" said Judy, awe-stricken at the catalogue of Black Sheep"s crimes. "Why are you so bad now?"
"I don"t know," Black Sheep would reply. "I"m not, if I only was n"t bothered upside down. I knew what I did, and I want to say so; but Harry always makes it out different somehow, and Aunty Rosa does n"t believe a word I say. Oh, Ju! don"t you say I"m bad too."
"Aunty Rosa says you are," said Judy. "She told the Vicar so when he came yesterday."
"Why does she tell all the people outside the house about me? It is n"t fair," said Black Sheep. "When I was in Bombay, and was bad--doing bad, not made-up bad like this--Mamma told Papa, and Papa told me he knew, and that was all. Outside people did n"t know too--even Meeta did n"t know."
"I don"t remember," said Judy wistfully. "I was all little then. Mamma was just as fond of you as she was of me, was n"t she?"
""Course she was. So was Papa. So was everybody."
"Aunty Rosa likes me more than she does you. She says that you are a Trial and a Black Sheep, and I"m not to speak to you more than I can help."
"Always? Not outside of the times when you must n"t speak to me at all?"
Judy nodded her head mournfully. Black Sheep turned away in despair, but Judy"s arms were round his neck.
"Never mind, Punch," she whispered. "I will speak to you just the same as ever and ever. You"re my own, own brother though you are--though Aunty Rosa says you"re Bad, and Harry says you"re a little coward. He says that if I pulled your hair hard, you"d cry."
"Pull, then," said Punch.
Judy pulled gingerly.
"Pull harder--as hard as you can! There! I don"t mind how much you pull it now. If you"ll speak to me same as ever I"ll let you pull it as much as you like--pull it out if you like. But I know if Harry came and stood by and made you do it I"d cry."
So the two children sealed the compact with a kiss, and Black Sheep"s heart was cheered within him, and by extreme caution and careful avoidance of Harry he acquired virtue and was allowed to read undisturbed for a week. Uncle Harry took him for walks and consoled him with rough tenderness, never calling him Black Sheep. "It"s good for you, I suppose, Punch," he used to say. "Let us sit down. I"m getting tired." His steps led him now not to the beach, but to the Cemetery of Rocklington, amid the potato-fields. For hours the gray man would sit on a tombstone, while Black Sheep read epitaphs, and then with a sigh would stump home again.
"I shall lie there soon," said he to Black Sheep; one winter evening, when his face showed white as a worn silver coin under the lights of the chapel-lodge. "You need n"t tell Aunty Rosa."
A month later, he turned sharp round, ere half a morning walk was completed, and stumped back to the house. "Put me to bed, Rosa," he muttered. "I"ve walked my last. The wadding has found me out."
They put him to bed, and for a fortnight the shadow of his sickness lay upon the house, and Black Sheep went to and fro un.o.bserved. Papa had sent him some new books, and he was told to keep quiet. He retired into his own world, and was perfectly happy. Even at night his felicity was unbroken. He could lie in bed and string himself tales of travel and adventure while Harry was downstairs.
"Uncle Harry"s going to die," said Judy, who now lived almost entirely with Aunty Rosa.
"I"m very sorry," said Black Sheep soberly. "He told me that a long time ago."
Aunty Rosa heard the conversation. "Will nothing check your wicked tongue?" she said angrily. There were blue circles round her eyes.
Black Sheep retreated to the nursery and read "Cometh up as a Flower"
with deep and uncomprehending interest. He had been forbidden to read it on account of its "sinfulness," but the bonds of the Universe were crumbling, and Aunty Rosa was in great grief.
"I"m glad," said Black Sheep. "She "s unhappy now. It was n"t a lie, though. I knew. He told me not to tell."
That night Black Sheep woke with a start. Harry was not in the room, and there was a sound of sobbing on the next floor. Then the voice of Uncle Harry, singing the song of the Battle of Navarino, cut through the darkness:
"Our vanship was the Asia-- The Albion and Genoa!"
"He "s getting well," thought Black Sheep, who knew the song through all its seventeen verses. But the blood froze at his little heart as he thought. The voice leapt an octave and rang shrill as a boatswain"s pipe:
"And next came on the lovely Rose, The Philomel, her fire-ship, closed, And the Little Brisk was sore exposed That day at Navarino."
"That day at Navarino, Uncle Harry!" shouted Black Sheep, half wild with excitement and fear of he knew not what.
A door opened and Aunty Rosa screamed up the staircase: "Hush! For G.o.d"s sake hush, you little devil. Uncle Harry is dead!"
THE THIRD BAG
Journeys end in lovers" meeting, Every wise man"s son doth know.
"I wonder what will happen to me now," thought Black Sheep, when the semi-pagan rites peculiar to the burial of the Dead in middle-cla.s.s houses had been accomplished, and Aunty Rosa, awful in black c.r.a.pe, had returned to this life. "I don"t think I"ve done anything bad that she knows of. I suppose I will soon. She will be very cross after Uncle Harry"s dying, and Harry will be cross too. I "ll keep in the nursery."
Unfortunately for Punch"s plans, it was decided that he should be sent to a day-school which Harry attended. This meant a morning walk with Harry, and perhaps an evening one; but the prospect of freedom in the interval was refreshing. "Harry "ll tell everything I do, but I won"t do anything," said Black Sheep. Fortified with this virtuous resolution, he went to school only to find that Harry"s version of his character had preceded him, and that life was a burden in consequence.
He took stock of his a.s.sociates. Some of them were unclean, some of them talked in dialect, many dropped their h"s, and there were two Jews and a Negro, or someone quite as dark, in the a.s.sembly. "That"s a hubshi," said Black Sheep to himself. "Even Meeta used to laugh at a hubshi. I don"t think this is a proper place." He was indignant for at least an hour, till he reflected that any expostulation on his part would be by Aunty Rosa construed into "showing off," and that Harry would tell the boys.
"How do you like school?" said Aunty Rosa at the end of the day.