The Frances Hodgson Burnett MEGAPACK ®. Frances Hodgson BurnettЧитать онлайн книгу.
“He’s a rare un,” they used to say. “An’ a noice little outspoken chap, too. Not much o’ th’ bad stock in him.” And they would go home and tell their wives about him, and the women would tell each other, and so it came about that almost every one talked of, or knew some story of, little Lord Fauntleroy; and gradually almost every one knew that the “wicked Earl” had found something he cared for at last—something which had touched and even warmed his hard, bitter old heart.
But no one knew quite how much it had been warmed, and how day by day the old man found himself caring more and more for the child, who was the only creature that had ever trusted him. He found himself looking forward to the time when Cedric would be a young man, strong and beautiful, with life all before him, but having still that kind heart and the power to make friends everywhere, and the Earl wondered what the lad would do, and how he would use his gifts. Often as he watched the little fellow lying upon the hearth, conning some big book, the light shining on the bright young head, his old eyes would gleam and his cheek would flush.
“The boy can do anything,” he would say to himself, “anything!”
He never spoke to any one else of his feeling for Cedric; when he spoke of him to others it was always with the same grim smile. But Fauntleroy soon knew that his grandfather loved him and always liked him to be near—near to his chair if they were in the library, opposite to him at table, or by his side when he rode or drove or took his evening walk on the broad terrace.
“Do you remember,” Cedric said once, looking up from his book as he lay on the rug, “do you remember what I said to you that first night about our being good companions? I don’t think any people could be better companions than we are, do you?”
“We are pretty good companions, I should say,” replied his lordship. “Come here.”
Fauntleroy scrambled up and went to him.
“Is there anything you want,” the Earl asked; “anything you have not?”
The little fellow’s brown eyes fixed themselves on his grandfather with a rather wistful look.
“Only one thing,” he answered.
“What is that?” inquired the Earl.
Fauntleroy was silent a second. He had not thought matters over to himself so long for nothing.
“What is it?” my lord repeated.
Fauntleroy answered.
“It is Dearest,” he said.
The old Earl winced a little.
“But you see her almost every day,” he said. “Is not that enough?”
“I used to see her all the time,” said Fauntleroy. “She used to kiss me when I went to sleep at night, and in the morning she was always there, and we could tell each other things without waiting.”
The old eyes and the young ones looked into each other through a moment of silence. Then the Earl knitted his brows.
“Do you never forget about your mother?” he said.
“No,” answered Fauntleroy, “never; and she never forgets about me. I shouldn’t forget about you, you know, if I didn’t live with you. I should think about you all the more.”
“Upon my word,” said the Earl, after looking at him a moment longer, “I believe you would!”
The jealous pang that came when the boy spoke so of his mother seemed even stronger than it had been before; it was stronger because of this old man’s increasing affection for the boy.
But it was not long before he had other pangs, so much harder to face that he almost forgot, for the time, he had ever hated his son’s wife at all. And in a strange and startling way it happened. One evening, just before the Earl’s Court cottages were completed, there was a grand dinner party at Dorincourt. There had not been such a party at the Castle for a long time. A few days before it took place, Sir Harry Lorridaile and Lady Lorridaile, who was the Earl’s only sister, actually came for a visit—a thing which caused the greatest excitement in the village and set Mrs. Dibble’s shop-bell tinkling madly again, because it was well known that Lady Lorridaile had only been to Dorincourt once since her marriage, thirty-five years before. She was a handsome old lady with white curls and dimpled, peachy cheeks, and she was as good as gold, but she had never approved of her brother any more than did the rest of the world, and having a strong will of her own and not being at all afraid to speak her mind frankly, she had, after several lively quarrels with his lordship, seen very little of him since her young days.
She had heard a great deal of him that was not pleasant through the years in which they had been separated. She had heard about his neglect of his wife, and of the poor lady’s death; and of his indifference to his children; and of the two weak, vicious, unprepossessing elder boys who had been no credit to him or to any one else. Those two elder sons, Bevis and Maurice, she had never seen; but once there had come to Lorridaile Park a tall, stalwart, beautiful young fellow about eighteen years old, who had told her that he was her nephew Cedric Errol, and that he had come to see her because he was passing near the place and wished to look at his Aunt Constantia of whom he had heard his mother speak. Lady Lorridaile’s kind heart had warmed through and through at the sight of the young man, and she had made him stay with her a week, and petted him, and made much of him and admired him immensely. He was so sweet-tempered, light-hearted, spirited a lad, that when he went away, she had hoped to see him often again; but she never did, because the Earl had been in a bad humor when he went back to Dorincourt, and had forbidden him ever to go to Lorridaile Park again. But Lady Lorridaile had always remembered him tenderly, and though she feared he had made a rash marriage in America, she had been very angry when she heard how he had been cast off by his father and that no one really knew where or how he lived. At last there came a rumor of his death, and then Bevis had been thrown from his horse and killed, and Maurice had died in Rome of the fever; and soon after came the story of the American child who was to be found and brought home as Lord Fauntleroy.
“Probably to be ruined as the others were,” she said to her husband, “unless his mother is good enough and has a will of her own to help her to take care of him.”
But when she heard that Cedric’s mother had been parted from him she was almost too indignant for words.
“It is disgraceful, Harry!” she said. “Fancy a child of that age being taken from his mother, and made the companion of a man like my brother! He will either be brutal to the boy or indulge him until he is a little monster. If I thought it would do any good to write—”
“It wouldn’t, Constantia,” said Sir Harry.
“I know it wouldn’t,” she answered. “I know his lordship the Earl of Dorincourt too well;—but it is outrageous.”
Not only the poor people and farmers heard about little Lord Fauntleroy; others knew him. He was talked about so much and there were so many stories of him—of his beauty, his sweet temper, his popularity, and his growing influence over the Earl, his grandfather—that rumors of him reached the gentry at their country places and he was heard of in more than one county of England. People talked about him at the dinner tables, ladies pitied his young mother, and wondered if the boy were as handsome as he was said to be, and men who knew the Earl and his habits laughed heartily at the stories of the little fellow’s belief in his lordship’s amiability. Sir Thomas Asshe of Asshawe Hall, being in Erleboro one day, met the Earl and his grandson riding together, and stopped to shake hands with my lord and congratulate him on his change of looks and on his recovery from the gout. “And, d’ ye know,” he said, when he spoke of the incident afterward, “the old man looked as proud as a turkey-cock; and upon my word I don’t wonder, for a handsomer, finer lad than his grandson I never saw! As straight as a dart, and sat his pony like a young trooper!”
And so by degrees Lady Lorridaile, too, heard of the child; she heard about Higgins and the lame boy, and the cottages at Earl’s Court, and a score of other things,—and she began to wish to see the little fellow. And just as she was wondering how it might be brought