Master and Maid. L. Allen Harker

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      "Clonmell senior must surely have married very young if you were his fag here," young Nick continued.

      "Clonmell married in his second year at Balliol, and Lallie and Paddy were born while he was still an undergraduate. He's just twenty-three years older than the twins--in years; in mind and conduct I do believe he's younger than either of them, and heaven knows they're young enough. Of course the Balliol authorities were furious at his marriage, but he was so brilliant, they let him stay on, for they didn't want to lose him. He was up five years you know, and took all sorts of honours in classics. It was just the same here; any other chap would have got the sack for half the things he did, but they knew he was safe for a Balliol scholarship and didn't want to lose him."

      "I've seen his name up in the big classical. Was he like Paddy?"

      "Very like Paddy. Didn't you see him when he was down here for the last concert, standing on a chair and singing 'Auld Lang Syne,' long after he ought to have shut up? Paddy's the living image of what he was at the same age, but hasn't half his brains. When he was here he had his prefect's star taken away three times; got it back; and finally they had to make him head of his house, for he was already captain of the eleven; and for years won every short race in the sports. But you could never tell what he'd do next. It wasn't that he broke rules, so much as that he always seemed to think of doing things no mortal had conceived possible. No code of rules on earth could be framed to forbid the doings of Fitzroy Clonmell."

      "Yet I suppose he was a good chap, really? Paddy was a thoroughly nice boy, with all his vagaries."

      "So was his father. Everybody liked him; everybody likes him to this day. He looks far too young to be anybody's father, and is tremendously popular wherever he is; but he's never in one place long--he's the most restless fellow in the world--and now he has gone to India, and left Lallie on my hands."

      "Surely it was an odd thing to do? A house for boys in a public school seems an incongruous sort of place to select."

      "It's just because it is a house for boys he has selected it. His theory is that nowhere is a girl so safe as surrounded by boys and men. I can see his reasoning myself, but you can't make the world see it. However, we'd better get those times fixed up and fit in the various teams. All that beastly physical drill to arrange, too--but you understand, don't you, Nicholl?"

      "I quite understand," young Nick replied with so profound a gravity that Tony instantly suspected him of a desire to laugh.

      They lit their pipes, and for an hour or more wrestled with the problem in hand. Then young Nick departed.

      The instant Tony was left alone he sat him down in a comfortable chair, switched on the electric light behind his head, and drew from his pocket a letter. First of all he looked at the date, which he had not done when he read it in the morning. It was dated eight days back, but the postmark was that of the day before.

      "Dear old Tony," it ran, "one always thinks of you when one wants anything done in a hurry, and done most uncommonly well. That's what you get by being so confoundedly conscientious and good-natured. The combination is a rare one. I, for instance, am good-natured, but my worst enemy couldn't call me tiresomely conscientious. Whenever you see my handwriting, you will say, 'Wonder what young Fitz wants now? Of course he wants something,' and of course I do. I want you to look after Lallie for me till the end of March. You've got a magnificent big house--far too large for a bachelor like you. You've got a lady-housekeeper whose manifest propriety is so stupendous that even Paddy is awed by it--a lady, I am sure, estimable in every respect--and you have fifty boys ranging from thirteen to nineteen. Oh, yes! and I forgot the worthy Paunch and Val. Now if you can't, amongst you, look after my little girl for six months you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. She's too old to put to school; I don't want to leave her with hunting friends where she'd be engaged and perhaps married before I got back. Young men are for ever falling in love with Lallie of late, and it's a terrible nuisance. She cares not a penny for any of them, so long as I am there to prove by comparison how inferior they all are to her own father. But with me away, who knows but that their blandishments might prevail? And I have other plans for Lallie--but not yet. As you know, I've brought her up in a sensible reasonable human sort of fashion. She has been taught to look upon mankind--and by mankind I mean the male portion of humanity--as fellow creatures, just as much deserving of kindness and trust and straightforward dealing as girls or women; and because she looks upon them as fellow-creatures, with no ridiculous mystery or conventional barriers between her and them, she is far safer than most girls not to make a fool of herself or to be taken in by cheap external attractions. Of course she's a bit of a flirt--what self-respecting Irish girl is not?--and your big boys will all be sighing at her shrine, but it will neither do them nor her any harm.

      "I don't often speak of Alice these days, but I never forget, and I know you'll be kind to my little girl for her sake. Let the child go to the dancing school, though there's little they can teach her; and she can keep up her singing, and perhaps she'd better ride, though riding with a master will be little to Lallie's taste. I enclose a cheque for the lessons, etc. She's a good girl, Tony; and in spite of her unusually sensible up-bringing, is as delicately feminine in all her instincts as any old Tabby in Hamchester.

      "Lord Nenogh offered me third gun in his shoot in India this cold weather, and I couldn't resist it. I was getting a bit musty. I've been bear-leading those children for eighteen months--ever since dear old Madame died. Lallie and I always hit it off perfectly, but Paddy's too like me, and gets on my nerves and reminds me that I'm not so young as I was, and I felt I needed a complete change of scene and people, if I am to remain the agreeable fellow I always have been; and I couldn't take Lallie with me tiger shooting, now could I? We sail from Marseilles in the Mooltan on the 29th; send me a line to the poste restante there, just to tell me that my property has duly reached you--as it should about the 23rd. Till then I shall be flying about all over the place.

      "Take care of my Lallie.

      "Yours as ever,

      "Fitz."

      The writing was small, close, upright, and distinct. When he had read the letter through Tony examined the envelope and found from its appearance that it had evidently spent a considerable time in somebody's pocket: either that of the writer or of some untrustworthy messenger.

      He lit another pipe, and as he watched the fragrant clouds of smoke roll forth and spend themselves about the room, his mind was busy with memories of Fitzroy Clonmell; brilliant, inconsequent, lovable failure.

      "He wouldn't have been a failure if his wife had lived," Tony always maintained to those who, remembering Fitz and his early promise of notable achievements, lamented his falling off; his wholesale violation of those youthful pledges.

      Tony found himself going back to those first years at Oxford, when brilliant Fitz did all he could to push his young schoolfellow among the athletic set, where, reading man as Fitz undoubtedly had been then, his place was quite as assured as in the schools. Tony remembered his shock of surprise when in his first term he went to Clonmell's rooms in the High, to find them tenanted by a brown-haired, gentle-voiced girl who informed him she was "Mrs. Clonmell"--Alice Clonmell.

      "Oh, don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?

      Sweet Alice, with hair hazel brown"--

      Fitz used to sing at a time when the whole world read "Trilby," and make eyes at his wife the while. She was very kind to Tony, and he adored her with the humble dog-like devotion of a rather plain and awkward youth whom ladies usually ignored.

      He remembered the wrath of the Balliol authorities, and Fitz's account of his stormy interview with the little Master, and how after much of what СКАЧАТЬ