His first thought when he stood in the open street again was suicide,—his next, Miss Letty. He walked along swiftly, scarcely heeding where he went, his head burning, his heart throbbing, his whole being possessed by the exceeding wrong done to him by Fate in endowing him with the mere fact of life. He was unconscious of making any protest, yet a protest there was in his own soul which would not and could not have found its way into words, because he did not himself recognize the nature of it. God alone was able to read that protest and understand it,—the terrible indictment brought against those who had been given this young life to guard and train to noblest results,—an indictment involuntarily and invisibly set before a crowd of witnesses every day by young men and women who owe their mistakes and miseries to the blind tyranny and selfishness of the parents who brought them into existence. If Boy had made an end of his troubles then and there he would not, strictly speaking, have murdered himself so much as his parents would have murdered him. From the earliest beginnings of childhood, all the seeds of his present misery had been sown,—by neglect, by carelessness, by bad example, by uncomfortable home surroundings, by domestic quarrellings,—by the want of all the grace, repose, freedom, courtesy, kindliness and sympathy, which should give every man’s house the hall-mark of “Home.” His childhood had been sad and solitary—his boyhood embittered by disappointment, followed by the excessive strain of “competitive cram,” which had tired and tortured every little cell in his brain to utter exhaustion,—he was old before he had had time to be young. Miss Letty! The thought of her just now in all his wretchedness brought a sudden mist of tears to his eyes. He had forgotten her so long—so long! And when he had seen her last he had scarcely been conscious of her, because so stupefied by the weight of the things he had to remember for his “exam.” She had seemed a dream to him, and so had the Major. Now, when the mass of undigested learning had all rolled off and been absolutely forgotten as though it had never been studied, the remembrance of her love for him as a child came freshly back like a breath from the sea, or the perfume of flowers. He slackened his hurried pace, and grew calmer. The stars were shining brightly above his head, though London was enswathed in a kind of low fog, which crept dismally up from the ground to the top of the ugly brick houses, and there hung like a veil—beyond this, the deep heavens arched high and clear, and Venus shone steadfastly like a lamp to guide lost travellers on their way.
“I will try Miss Letty,” he said to himself. “I won’t tell her just yet how I have been caught in a gambler’s snare—I will just simply ask her if she will lend me a little money. Then if she says ‘Yes’ I will go to her and explain. I don’t think she will refuse.”
He carried this plan into action the next day, and wrote to his old friend as follows:—
“Dear Miss Letty,
I am afraid you will have thought me very careless in not writing to you all these years, and very selfish now to write when I have only a favour to ask of you, but I hope you will not mind, and try still to keep as good an opinion of me as you can. I have got into rather a difficulty, and am in urgent need of a little money. Can you lend me some? I do not know when I shall be able to pay you back, but I do not think you will be a very hard creditor to
Yours affectionately,
Boy.”
He posted this in the morning about ten o’clock. At eight the same evening he got his answer, enclosing a cheque for fifty pounds and the following letter:—
“My dear Boy,—
I am so very glad to hear from you again. Please accept the enclosed as a little present. Change it at my bank, and if you like to come and see me afterwards, and talk over your difficulties, I shall be only too happy to help you. I am nearly always to be found at home, as I am rather an invalid.
Your old friend,
Letitia Leslie.”