Little Lord Fauntleroy (2 page)

It was not long after this election, when Cedric was between seven and eight years old, that the very strange thing happened which made so wonderful a change in his life. It was quite curious, too, that the day it happened he had been talking to Mr. Hobbs about England and the Queen, and Mr. Hobbs had said some very severe things about the aristocracy, being specially indignant against earls and marquises. It had been a hot morning, and after playing soldiers with some friends of his, Cedric had gone into the store to rest, and had found Mr. Hobbs looking very fierce over a piece of the
Illustrated London News,
which contained a picture of some Court ceremony.

“Ah,” he said, “That's the way they go on now; but they'll get enough of it some day, when those they've trod on rise and blow 'em up sky-high—earls and marquises and all! It's coming, and they may look out for it!”

Cedric had perched himself as usual on the high stool and pushed his hat back, and put his hands in his pockets in delicate compliment to Mr. Hobbs.

“Did you ever know many marquises, Mr. Hobbs?” Cedric inquired; “or earls?”

“No,” answered Mr. Hobbs with indignation; “I guess not. I'd like to catch one of 'em inside here; that's all! I'll have no grasping tyrants sittin' 'round on my biscuit barrels!”

And he was so proud of the sentiment that he looked around proudly and mopped his forehead.

“Perhaps they wouldn't be earls if they knew any better,” said Cedric, feeling some vague sympathy for their unhappy condition.

“Wouldn't they!” said Mr. Hobbs. “They just glory in it! It's in 'em. They're a bad lot.”

They were in the midst of their conversation, when Mary appeared. Cedric thought she had come to buy some sugar, perhaps, but she had not. She looked almost pale as if she were excited about something.

“Come home, darlint,” she said; “the misthress is wantin' yez.”

Cedric slipped down from his stool. “Does she want me to go out with her, Mary?” he asked. “Good morning, Mr. Hobbs. I'll see you again.”

He was surprised to see Mary staring at him in a dumbfounded fashion, and he wondered why she kept shaking her head. “What's the matter, Mary?” he said. “Is it the hot weather?”

“No,” said Mary, “but there's strange things happenin' to us.”

“Has the sun given Dearest a headache?” he inquired anxiously.

But it was not that. When he reached his own house there was a coupé standing before the door, and someone was in the little parlor talking to his mamma. Mary hurried him upstairs and put on his best summer suit of cream-colored flannel with the red scarf around the waist, and combed out his curly locks.

“Lords, is it?” he heard her say. “An' the nobility an' gin-try. Och! bad cess to them! Lords indade—worse luck.”

It was really very puzzling, but he felt sure his mamma would tell him what all the excitement meant, so he allowed Mary to bemoan herself without asking many questions. When he was dressed, he ran downstairs and went into the parlor. A tall, thin old gentleman with a sharp face was sitting in an armchair. His mother was standing near by with a pale face, and he saw that there were tears in her eyes.

“Oh, Ceddie!” she cried out, and ran to her little boy and caught him in her arms and kissed him in a frightened, troubled way. “Oh, Ceddie darling!”

The tall old gentleman rose from his chair and looked at Cedric with his sharp eyes. He rubbed his thin chin with his bony hand as he looked. He seemed not at all displeased.

“And so,” he said at last slowly, “and so this is little Lord Fauntleroy.”

T
HERE was never a more amazed little boy than Cedric during the week that followed; there was never so strange or so unreal a week. In the first place, the story his mamma told him was a very curious one. He was obliged to hear it two or three times before he could understand it. He could not imagine what Mr. Hobbs would think of it. It began with earls: his grandpapa, whom he had never seen, was an earl; and his eldest uncle, if he had not been killed by a fall from his horse, would have been an earl too in time; and after his death, his other uncle would have been an earl, if he had not died suddenly, in Rome, of fever. After that, his own papa, if he had lived, would have been an earl; but since they had all died and only Cedric was left, it appeared that
he
was to be an earl after his grandpapa's death—and for the present he was Lord Fauntleroy.

He turned quite pale when he was first told of it.

“Oh, Dearest,” he said, “I should rather not be an earl. None of the boys are earls. Can't I
not
be one?”

But it seemed to be unavoidable. And when, that evening, they sat together by the open window looking out into the shabby street, he and his mother had a long talk about it. Cedric sat on his footstool, clasping one knee in his favorite attitude and wearing a bewildered little face rather red from the exertion of thinking. His grandfather had sent for him to come to England and his mamma thought he must go.

“Because,” she said, looking out of the window with sorrowful eyes, “I know your papa would wish it to be so, Ceddie. He loved his home very much; and there are many things to be thought of that a little boy can't quite understand. I should be a selfish little mother if I did not send you. When you are a man you will see why.”

Ceddie shook his head mournfully. “I shall be very sorry to leave Mr. Hobbs,” he said. “I'm afraid he'll miss me, and I shall miss him. And I shall miss them all.”

When Mr. Havisham—who was the family lawyer of the Earl of Dorincourt, and who had been sent by him to bring Lord Fauntleroy to England—came the next day, Cedric heard many things. But somehow it did not console him to hear that he was to be a very rich man when he grew up, and that he would have castles here and castles there, and great parks and deep mines and grand estates and tenantry. He was troubled about his friend, Mr. Hobbs, and he went to see him at the store soon after breakfast in great anxiety of mind.

He found him reading the morning paper, and he approached him with a grave demeanor. He really felt it would be a great shock to Mr. Hobbs to hear what had befallen him, and on his way to the store he had been thinking how it would be best to break the news.

“Hello!” said Mr. Hobbs. “Mornin'!”

“Good morning,” said Cedric.

He did not climb up on the high stool as usual but sat down on a biscuit box and clasped his knee, and was so silent for a few moments that Mr. Hobbs finally looked up inquiringly over the top of his newspaper.

“Hello!” he said again.

Cedric gathered all his strength of mind together.

“Mr. Hobbs,” he said, “do you remember what we were talking about yesterday morning?”

“Well,” replied Mr. Hobbs, “seems to me it was England.”

“Yes,” said Cedric; “but just when Mary came for me, you know?”

Mr. Hobbs rubbed the back of his head.

“We
was
mentioning Queen Victoria and the aristocracy.”

“Yes,” said Cedric, rather hesitatingly, “and—and earls; don't you know?”

“Why, yes,” returned Mr. Hobbs; “we
did
touch 'em up a little; that's so!”

Cedric flushed up to the curly hair on his forehead. Nothing so embarrassing as this had ever happened to him in his life. He was a little afraid that it might be a trifle embarrassing to Mr. Hobbs too.

“You said,” he proceeded, “that you wouldn't have them sitting 'round on your biscuit barrels.”

“So I did!” returned Mr. Hobbs stoutly. “And I meant it. Let 'em try it—that's all!”

“Mr. Hobbs,” said Cedric, “one is sitting on this box now!”

Mr. Hobbs almost jumped out of his chair.

“What!” he exclaimed.

“Yes,” Cedric announced with due modesty; “
I
am one—or I am going to be. I shan't deceive you.”

Mr. Hobbs looked agitated. He rose up suddenly and went to look at the thermometer.

“The mercury's got into your head!” he exclaimed, turning back to examine his young friend's countenance. “It
is
a hot day! How do you feel? Got any pain? When did you begin to feel that way?”

He put his big hand on the little boy's hair. This was more embarrassing than ever.

“Thank you,” said Ceddie; “I'm all right. There is nothing the matter with my head. I'm sorry to say it's true, Mr. Hobbs. That was what Mary came to take me home for. Mr. Havisham was telling my mamma, and he is a lawyer.”

Mr. Hobbs sank into his chair and mopped his forehead with his handkerchief.

“
One
of us has got a sunstroke!” he exclaimed.

“No,” returned Cedric, “we have not. We shall have to make the best of it, Mr. Hobbs. Mr. Havisham came all the way from England to tell us about it. My grandpapa sent him.”

Mr. Hobbs stared wildly at the innocent, serious little face before him.

“Who is your grandfather?” he asked.

Cedric put his hand in his pocket and carefully drew out a piece of paper, on which something was written in his own round, irregular hand.

“I couldn't easily remember it, so I wrote it down on this,” he said. And he read aloud slowly: “‘John Arthur Molyneux Errol, Earl of Dorincourt.' That is his name, and he lives in a castle—in two or three castles, I think. And my papa, who died, was his youngest son; and I shouldn't have been a lord or an earl if my papa hadn't died; and my papa wouldn't have been an earl if his two brothers hadn't died. But they all died, and there is no one but me—no boy—and so I have to be one; and my grandpapa has sent for me to come to England.”

Mr. Hobbs seemed to grow hotter and hotter. He mopped his forehead and his bald spot and breathed hard. He began to see that something very remarkable had happened; but when he looked at the little boy sitting on the biscuit box with the innocent, anxious expression in his childish eyes, and saw that he was not changed at all, but was simply as he had been the day before, just a handsome, cheerful, brave little fellow in a black cloth suit and red neck-ribbon, all this information about the nobility bewildered him. He was all the more bewildered because Cedric gave it with such ingenuous simplicity and plainly without realizing himself how stupendous it was.

“Wha—what did you say your name was?” Mr. Hobbs inquired.

“It's Cedric Errol, Lord Fauntleroy,” answered Cedric. “That was what Mr. Havisham called me. He said when I went into the room: ‘And so this is little Lord Fauntleroy!'”

“Well,” said Mr. Hobbs, “I'll be—jiggered!”

This was an exclamation he always used when he was very much astonished or excited. He could think of nothing else to say just at that puzzling moment.

Cedric felt it to be quite a proper and suitable ejaculation. His respect and affection for Mr. Hobbs were so great that he admired and approved of all his remarks. He had not seen enough of society as yet to make him realize that sometimes Mr. Hobbs was not quite conventional. He knew, of course, that he was different from his mamma, but then his mamma was a lady, and he had an idea that ladies were always different from gentlemen.

He looked at Mr. Hobbs wistfully.

“England is a long way off, isn't it?” he asked.

“It's across the Atlantic Ocean,” Mr. Hobbs answered.

“That's the worst of it,” said Cedric. “Perhaps I shall not see you again for a long time. I don't like to think of that, Mr. Hobbs.”

“The best of friends must part,” said Mr. Hobbs.

“Well,” said Cedric, “we have been friends for a great many years, haven't we?”

“Ever since you was born,” Mr. Hobbs answered. “You was about six weeks old when you was first walked out on this street.”

“Ah,” remarked Cedric with a sigh, “I never thought I should have to be an earl then!”

“You think,” said Mr. Hobbs, “there's no getting out of it?”

“I'm afraid not,” answered Cedric. “My mamma says that my papa would wish me to do it. But if I have to be an earl, there's one thing I can do: I can try to be a good one. I'm not going to be a tyrant. And if there is ever to be another war with America, I shall try to stop it.”

His conversation with Mr. Hobbs was a long and serious one. Once having got over the first shock, Mr. Hobbs was not so rancorous as might have been expected; he endeavored to resign himself to the situation, and before the interview was at an end he had asked a great many questions. As Cedric could answer but few of them, he endeavored to answer them himself, and being fairly launched on the subject of earls and marquises and lordly estates, explained many things in a way which would probably have astonished Mr. Havisham, could that gentleman have heard it.

But then there were many things which astonished Mr. Havisham. He had spent all his life in England, and was not accustomed to American people and American habits. He had been connected professionally with the family of the Earl of Dorincourt for nearly forty years, and he knew all about its grand estates and its great wealth and importance; and, in a cold business-like way, he felt an interest in this little boy who, in the future, was to be the master and owner of them all—the future Earl of Dorincourt. He had known all about the old Earl's disappointment in his elder sons and all about his fierce rage at Captain Cedric's American marriage, and he knew how he still hated the gentle little widow and would not speak of her except with bitter and cruel words. He insisted that she was only a common American girl who had entrapped his son into marrying her because she knew he was an earl's son. The old lawyer himself had more than half believed this was all true. He had seen a great many selfish, mercenary people in his life, and he had not a good opinion of Americans. When he had been driven into the cheap street, and his coupé had stopped before the cheap small house, he had felt actually shocked. It seemed really quite dreadful to think that the future owner of Dorincourt Castle and Wyndham Towers and Chorlworth, and all the other stately splendors, should have been born and brought up in an insignificant house in a street with a sort of greengrocery at the corner. He wondered what kind of a child he would be, and what kind of a mother he had. He rather shrank from seeing them both. He had a sort of pride in the noble family whose legal affairs he had conducted so long, and it would have annoyed him very much to have found himself obliged to manage a woman who would seem to him a vulgar, money-loving person, with no respect for her dead husband's country and the dignity of his name. It was a very old name and a very splendid one, and Mr. Havisham had a great respect for it himself though he was only a cold, keen business-like old lawyer.

When Mary handed him into the small parlor he looked around it critically. It was plainly furnished, but it had a home-like look; there were no cheap, common ornaments, and no cheap, gaudy pictures; the few adornments on the walls were in good taste, and about the room were many pretty things which a woman's hand might have made.

“Not at all bad so far,” he had said to himself; “but perhaps the Captain's taste predominated.” But when Mrs. Errol came into the room, he began to think she herself might have had something to do with it. If he had not been quite a self-contained and stiff old gentleman, he would probably have started when he saw her. She looked in the simple black dress, fitting closely to her slender figure, more like a young girl than the mother of a boy of seven. She had a pretty, sorrowful young face, and a very tender, innocent look in her large brown eyes—the sorrowful look that had never quite left her face since her husband had died. Cedric was used to seeing it there; the only times he had ever seen it fade out had been when he was playing with her or talking to her, and had said some old-fashioned thing, or used some long word he had picked up out of the newspapers or in his conversations with Mr. Hobbs. He was fond of using long words, and he was always pleased when they made her laugh, though he could not understand why they were laughable; they were quite serious matters with him. The lawyer's experience taught him to read people's characters very shrewdly, and as soon as he saw Cedric's mother he knew that the old Earl had made a great mistake in thinking her a vulgar, mercenary woman. Mr. Havisham had never been married, he had never even been in love, but he divined that this pretty young creature with the sweet voice and sad eyes had married Captain Errol only because she loved him with all her affectionate heart, and that she had never once thought it an advantage that he was an earl's son. And he saw he should have no trouble with her, and he began to feel that perhaps little Lord Fauntleroy might not be such a trial to his noble family after all. The Captain had been a handsome fellow, and the young mother was very pretty, and perhaps the boy might be well enough to look at.

When he first told Mrs. Errol what he had come for, she turned very pale.

“Oh,” she said, “will he have to be taken away from me? We love each other so much! He is such a happiness to me! He is all I have. I have tried to be a good mother to him.” And her sweet young voice trembled, and the tears rushed into her eyes. “You do not know what he has been to me!” she said.

The lawyer cleared his throat.

“I am obliged to tell you,” he said, “that the Earl of Dorincourt is not—is not very friendly towards you. He is an old man, and his prejudices are very strong. He has always especially disliked America and Americans, and was very much enraged by his son's marriage. I am sorry to be the bearer of so unpleasant a communication, but he is very fixed in his determination not to see you. His plan is that Lord Fauntleroy shall be educated under his own supervision; that he shall live with him. The Earl is attached to Dorincourt Castle, and spends a great deal of time there. He is a victim to inflammatory gout, and is not fond of London. Lord Fauntleroy will, therefore, be likely to live chiefly at Dorincourt. The Earl offers you as a home Court Lodge, which is situated pleasantly, and is not very far from the Castle. He also offers you a suitable income. Lord Fauntleroy will be permitted to visit you; the only stipulation is, that you shall not visit him or enter the park gates. You see you will not be really separated from your son, and I assure you, madam, the terms are not so harsh as—as they might have been. The advantage of such surroundings and education as Lord Fauntleroy will have, I am sure you must see, will be very great.”