Memory, stirring uneasily, awoke.
There was the time when Buffey died. Buffey was the Irish terrier. At first he had been merely told that Buffey had gone away. Continual, and perhaps over-persistent questioning, had elicited the fact of Buffey’s demise. Biddy had been cross when she told him, and she was sorry afterwards. But, still, it had been the truth. No subsequent regret could alter that fact. Possibly this was the truth now.
From possibility, the thing became a certainty. He remembered glances at him, whispers—unnoticed at the time—of “poor little Antony”; conversations checked at his approach. They came back to him now, not fully, but vaguely, holding significance. Probably Granny couldn’t prevent this any more than she could prevent Buffey dying. And she had told him she couldn’t help that.
He began to experience a strange terror.
There is no dread as terrible as the dread a child suffers at the hint of some unknown calamity. He feels it must strike, but does not know at which moment, nor from which quarter the blow will fall. In most childish sufferings there is always a certain consolation in the knowledge of protection by some older person. But when there is reason to suppose that these natural protectors are powerless to aid, terror indeed presses hard.
It pressed hard on Antony now.
The room seemed too small to hold it. Blindly he turned from the window, ran stumbling from the nursery, down the stairs, and out into the garden. He ran past the flower beds, and the sun-dial, and the close-clipped yew hedges, till he found himself in a small paddock. There he sat down under the hedge and began to review the situation.
A beggar boy!
He had no precise understanding of what the words meant, nevertheless he fancied they were closely akin to the description of Hans Anderson’s little match girl, who warmed her blue fingers at the matches till she died. The story was at once fascinating and terrifying. Aunt Rosamund had read it to him only once. After the one reading she had suggested the Little Tin Soldier, Thumbelina, or the Ugly Duckling. Nevertheless the story had remained with him.
Rags, cold, and burnt matches, and finally dying! His lips quivered, and tears came into his eyes.