“You’re younger than you were, chappie—more like what I used to be at your age. That young ruffian’s doing you good. What d’you play at?”
When penny dreadfuls were mentioned, Jimmie Boy closed one eye and squinted at his son humorously. “That’s not much of a diet—not much in keeping with The Ange’s Sin and a boy who’s going to be a genius. Tell you what I’ll do; let’s have Ruddy in and I’ll reform you.”
Then began a magic chain of nights and days. As soon as the breakfast-tray had been carried down, Jimmie Boy would commence his reading. It was Margaret of Valois that he chose as being the nearest thing in literature to a penny dreadful. Teddy, lying cosily between sheets, would listen to the booming voice, which rumbled like a gale about the pale walls of the bedroom. Seated in a great armchair, with his pipe going like a furnace and his knees spread apart before the fire, his rebel father acted out with his free hand all the glorious love scenes and stabbings. Ruddy, stretched like a dog upon the floor, his elbows digging into the carpet, gazed up at Jimmie Boy adoringly. For a week they kept company with kings and queens, listening to the clash of swords and witnessing the intrigue of stolen kisses. They wandered down moonlit streets of Paris, were present at the massacre of St. Batholomew’s Eve, and saw the Duchess of Guise, having rescued Coconnas from the blades of the Huguenots, hide him, dripping with blood, in her secret closet.
When Margaret of Valois was ended, Hereward the Wake followed, and then Rienzi.
“And that’s literature,” Jimmie Boy told them. “How about your penny dreadfuls now?”
In the afternoons Dearie would join them. “You three boys,” she called them. She always made a pretense that she was intruding, till she had been entreated in flowery romance language to enter. Then, sitting on the bed like a tall white queen, her hand clasped in Teddy’s, she would watch dreamily, with those violet eyes of hers, the shaggy head of Jimmie Boy tossing in a melody of words.
It was this week, with its delving into ancient stories, that taught him what his parents’ love really meant—it was a rampart thrown up by the soul against calamity. They had been poor and harassed and disappointed. There had been times when they had spoken crossly. But in their hearts they still stood hand-in-hand, always guarding a royal place in which they could be happy.
“I say,” whispered Ruddy, “your people—they’re toppers. Let’s go slow on the penny dreadfuls.”