And to hear him sweetly meandering along in this fashion, the uninitiated stranger might have imagined “Kiss-Letty” to be a kind of fairy,—an elf, born of moonlight and lilies, rather than what she really was, a spinster of forty-five, who made no pretences to be a whit younger than she was,—a spinster who was perfectly content to wear her own beautiful grey hair, and to wish for no “touching up” on the delicate worn pallor of her cheeks—a spinster, moreover, who was proud of her spinsterhood, as it was the sign of her unbroken fidelity to a dead man who had loved her. Miss Letitia Leslie had had her history, her own private tragedy of tears and heart-break; but the depths of sorrow in her soul had turned to sweetness instead of sourness,—her own grief had taught her to be compassionate of all griefs, and the unkind sword of fate that had pierced her gentle breast rendered her delicately cautious of ever wounding, by so much as a word or a look, the sensitive feelings of others. Death and circumstance had made her the independent mistress of a large fortune, which she used lavishly for the private doing of good where evil abounded. Into the foul and festering slums of the great city—into the shabby dwellings of poorly paid clerks and half-starved curates,—up among the barely furnished attics where struggling artists worked for scanty livelihood and the distant hope of fame, “Kiss-Letty” took her sweet and gracious presence, wearing a smile that was a very good reflex of God’s sunshine, and speaking comfort in a voice as tender as that of any imagined angel bringing God’s messages. Much of the grinding of the ceaseless wheel of tribulation did Miss Letitia see, as she went to and fro on her various errands of mercy and friendship; but perhaps among all the haunts and homes where her personality was familiar, her interest had seldom been more strongly aroused than in the ill-ordered household in Hereford Square, where Captain the Honourable D’Arcy-Muir drank and swore, and his wife “slovened” the hours away in muddle and misanthropy. For here was Boy,—Boy, a soft, smiling morsel of helpless life and innocent expectancy,—Boy, who stretched out plump mottled arms to “Kiss-Letty,” and said, chucklingly, “Ullo!”—(an exclamation he had picked up from the friendly policeman at the corner of the square, who greeted him thus when he went out in his perambulator)—“Ullo! ’Ows ’oo, Kiss-Letty? Wants Boy out! Kiss-Letty take Boy wiz her walk-talk.”
Which observation, rendered into heavier English, implied that Boy politely enquired after Miss Letitia’s health, and desired to go out walking and likewise talking with that lady.
And no one in all the world responded more promptly or more lovingly to Boy’s delightful amenities than Miss Letitia did. The wisely-sweet expression of the child’s face fascinated her,—she saw in Boy the possibilities of noble manhood, graced perhaps by the rarest gifts of genius. Believers in hereditary development would have asked her how she could imagine it possible for a child born of such parents to possess an ideal or exceptionally endowed nature? To which she would have replied that she did not believe in the heritage so much as the environment of life. Here she was partly wrong and partly right. Such inexplicable things happen in the evolution of one particular human being from a whole chain of other human beings that it is impossible to gauge correctly the result of the whole. Why, for example, the poet Keats should have had such indifferent parentage will always be somewhat of a mystery. And why men, lineally descended from “ancient, noble and honourable” families should, in this day, have degenerated into turf-gamblers, drunkards and social rascals generally, is also a bewildering conundrum. In the case of Keats, birth and environment were against him,—in the case of the modern aristocrat birth and environment are with him. The one has become an English classic; the other is an English disgrace. Who shall clear up the darkness surrounding the working of this law? Miss Letitia made no attempt to penetrate such physiological obscurities,—she simply argued that for Boy to be brought up in a “muddle,” and set face to face with the ever-present whisky-bottle, was decidedly injurious to his future prospects. The D’Arcy-Muirs were poor, though they had “expectations,”—she, Miss Letitia, was rich. She had no relatives,—no one in the world had the least claim upon her,—and she had serious thoughts of adopting Boy. Would his parents part with him? That was a knotty point, a delicate and very doubtful question. But she had considered it for some time carefully, and had come to the reasonable conclusion that, as Boy seemed to be rather in the way of his father and mother than otherwise, and that moreover, as her terms of adoption were inclusive of making him her sole heir, it was probable she might gain the victory. And the very day on which this true narrative begins, when Captain the Honourable was executing his whisky war-dance to the accompaniment of his son’s murmured “Poo Sing!” and rhythmic spoon-tapping, was the one selected by the gentle lady to commence operations, or, as she put it, “to break the proposition gradually” to the strange parents whose daily lives furnished such a singular example of wedded felicity to their observant offspring. When her dainty brougham, drawn by its sleek and spirited roans, drew up at the door of the house in Hereford Square, there were various signs even outside that habitation to fill the order-loving spirit of Miss Letitia with doubtful qualms and hesitations. To begin with, there was not a blind in any of the windows that was drawn up straight; they were all awry. This gave the dwelling a generally squinting, leering, look which was not pleasant. Then again, the doorsteps were dirty. There were strange, smeary pieces of paper floating down the area, in grimy companionship with broken bits of straw. The bell-handle hung out of its socket, somewhat like an eye undergoing the latest surgical operation for cataract. There were recent traces of coal on the pavement,—a ton had evidently just been shot down the “hole-into-the-cellar” arrangement which some brilliant British “bright idea” has invented for the greater accumulation of dirt in the streets; and the coal-men had not troubled to “clean up” after the performance. Miss Letitia, stepping lightly out of her carriage, was compelled to crunch the heels of her pretty little brodequins in coal-dust, and soil the delicate edge of her frilled silk petticoat in the same. Cautiously she handled the helpless-looking bell-pull, with the result that a hollow tinkling sound awakened the interior echoes. The door opened, and a slatternly maid-servant appeared.
“Is Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir——?”
“Yes, ’m, at home to you, ’m, of course, ’m. But she’s hout to most, on account of master’s bein’ orful bad. Orful bad he is. Step in, please ’m.”
Whereupon Miss Letitia “stepped in,” asking pleasantly as she did so,—
“And how is dear Boy?”
“Oh, jes’ the same, ’m! Allus smilin’ an’ comfoble-like. Never see such a child for good temper. Seems allus a-thinkin’ pretty. This way, ’m!”
And she escorted her visitor into a small side-room which Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir called her “boudoir,”—announcing briskly,—
“Miss Leslie, ’m!”