The Complete Works of Frances Hodgson Burnett. Frances Hodgson BurnettЧитать онлайн книгу.
picked it up and looked at it carefully.
“It’s from HIM!” he exclaimed. “That’s the very one it’s from!”
He forgot his pipe altogether. He went back to his chair quite excited and took his pocket-knife and opened the envelope.
“I wonder what news there is this time,” he said.
And then he unfolded the letter and read as follows:
“DORINCOURT CASTLE” My dear Mr. Hobbs
“I write this in a great hury becaus i have something curous to tell you i know you will be very mutch suprised my dear frend when i tel you. It is all a mistake and i am not a lord and i shall not have to be an earl there is a lady whitch was marid to my uncle bevis who is dead and she has a little boy and he is lord fauntleroy becaus that is the way it is in England the earls eldest sons little boy is the earl if every body else is dead i mean if his farther and grandfarther are dead my grandfarther is not dead but my uncle bevis is and so his boy is lord Fauntleroy and i am not becaus my papa was the youngest son and my name is Cedric Errol like it was when i was in New York and all the things will belong to the other boy i thought at first i should have to give him my pony and cart but my grandfarther says i need not my grandfarther is very sorry and i think he does not like the lady but preaps he thinks dearest and i are sorry because i shall not be an earl i would like to be an earl now better than i thout i would at first becaus this is a beautifle castle and i like every body so and when you are rich you can do so many things i am not rich now becaus when your papa is only the youngest son he is not very rich i am going to learn to work so that i can take care of dearest i have been asking Wilkins about grooming horses preaps i might be a groom or a coachman. The lady brought her little boy to the castle and my grandfarther and Mr. Havisham talked to her i think she was angry she talked loud and my grandfarther was angry too i never saw him angry before i wish it did not make them all mad i thort i would tell you and Dick right away becaus you would be intrusted so no more at present with love from
“your old frend
“CEDRIC ERROL (Not lord Fauntleroy).”
Mr. Hobbs fell back in his chair, the letter dropped on his knee, his pen-knife slipped to the floor, and so did the envelope.
“Well!” he ejaculated, “I am jiggered!”
He was so dumfounded that he actually changed his exclamation. It had always been his habit to say, “I WILL be jiggered,” but this time he said, “I AM jiggered.” Perhaps he really WAS jiggered. There is no knowing.
“Well,” said Dick, “the whole thing’s bust up, hasn’t it?”
“Bust!” said Mr. Hobbs. “It’s my opinion it’s a put-up job o’ the British ristycrats to rob him of his rights because he’s an American. They’ve had a spite agin us ever since the Revolution, an’ they’re takin’ it out on him. I told you he wasn’t safe, an’ see what’s happened! Like as not, the whole gover’ment’s got together to rob him of his lawful ownin’s.”
He was very much agitated. He had not approved of the change in his young friend’s circumstances at first, but lately he had become more reconciled to it, and after the receipt of Cedric’s letter he had perhaps even felt some secret pride in his young friend’s magnificence. He might not have a good opinion of earls, but he knew that even in America money was considered rather an agreeable thing, and if all the wealth and grandeur were to go with the title, it must be rather hard to lose it.
“They’re trying to rob him!” he said, “that’s what they’re doing, and folks that have money ought to look after him.”
And he kept Dick with him until quite a late hour to talk it over, and when that young man left, he went with him to the corner of the street; and on his way back he stopped opposite the empty house for some time, staring at the “To Let,” and smoking his pipe, in much disturbance of mind.
XII
A very few days after the dinner party at the Castle, almost everybody in England who read the newspapers at all knew the romantic story of what had happened at Dorincourt. It made a very interesting story when it was told with all the details. There was the little American boy who had been brought to England to be Lord Fauntleroy, and who was said to be so fine and handsome a little fellow, and to have already made people fond of him; there was the old Earl, his grandfather, who was so proud of his heir; there was the pretty young mother who had never been forgiven for marrying Captain Errol; and there was the strange marriage of Bevis, the dead Lord Fauntleroy, and the strange wife, of whom no one knew anything, suddenly appearing with her son, and saying that he was the real Lord Fauntleroy and must have his rights. All these things were talked about and written about, and caused a tremendous sensation. And then there came the rumor that the Earl of Dorincourt was not satisfied with the turn affairs had taken, and would perhaps contest the claim by law, and the matter might end with a wonderful trial.
There never had been such excitement before in the county in which Erleboro was situated. On market-days, people stood in groups and talked and wondered what would be done; the farmers’ wives invited one another to tea that they might tell one another all they had heard and all they thought and all they thought other people thought. They related wonderful anecdotes about the Earl’s rage and his determination not to acknowledge the new Lord Fauntleroy, and his hatred of the woman who was the claimant’s mother. But, of course, it was Mrs. Dibble who could tell the most, and who was more in demand than ever.
“An’ a bad lookout it is,” she said. “An’ if you were to ask me, ma’am, I should say as it was a judgment on him for the way he’s treated that sweet young cre’tur’ as he parted from her child,—for he’s got that fond of him an’ that set on him an’ that proud of him as he’s a’most drove mad by what’s happened. An’ what’s more, this new one’s no lady, as his little lordship’s ma is. She’s a bold-faced, black-eyed thing, as Mr. Thomas says no gentleman in livery ‘u’d bemean hisself to be gave orders by; and let her come into the house, he says, an’ he goes out of it. An’ the boy don’t no more compare with the other one than nothin’ you could mention. An’ mercy knows what’s goin’ to come of it all, an’ where it’s to end, an’ you might have knocked me down with a feather when Jane brought the news.”
In fact there was excitement everywhere at the Castle: in the library, where the Earl and Mr. Havisham sat and talked; in the servants’ hall, where Mr. Thomas and the butler and the other men and women servants gossiped and exclaimed at all times of the day; and in the stables, where Wilkins went about his work in a quite depressed state of mind, and groomed the brown pony more beautifully than ever, and said mournfully to the coachman that he “never taught a young gen’leman to ride as took to it more nat’ral, or was a better-plucked one than he was. He was a one as it were some pleasure to ride behind.”
But in the midst of all the disturbance there was one person who was quite calm and untroubled. That person was the little Lord Fauntleroy who was said not to be Lord Fauntleroy at all. When first the state of affairs had been explained to him, he had felt some little anxiousness and perplexity, it is true, but its foundation was not in baffled ambition.
While the Earl told him what had happened, he had sat on a stool holding on to his knee, as he so often did when he was listening to anything interesting; and by the time the story was finished he looked quite sober.
“It makes me feel very queer,” he said; “it makes me feel—queer!”
The Earl looked at the boy in silence. It made him feel queer, too—queerer than he had ever felt in his whole life. And he felt more queer still when he saw that there was a troubled expression on the small face which was usually so happy.
“Will they take Dearest’s house from her—and her carriage?” Cedric asked in a rather unsteady, anxious little voice.
“NO!” said the Earl decidedly—in quite a loud voice, in fact. “They can take nothing