A True Friend Part 18

"I won't have it! I won't have it!" he was crying, with the whole force of his lungs. "I won't touch it! Take the nasty stuff away!"

Janetta wondered whether it were medicine he was refusing, and why his father did not insist upon obedience. But Wyvis Brand, still standing by the mantel-piece, only laughed aloud.

"No shirking! Drink it up!" said the strange gentleman, in what Janetta thought a curiously unpleasant voice. "Come, come, it will make a man of you----"

"I don't want to be made a man of! I won't touch it! I promised I never would! You can't make me!"

"You must be taught not to make rash promises," said the man, laughing.

"Come now----"

But little Julian had suddenly caught sight of Janetta's figure at the door, and with a great bound he escaped from his tormentor and flung himself upon her, burying his face in her dress, and clutching its folds as if he would never let them go.

"It's the lady! the lady!" he gasped out. "Oh, please don't let them make me drink it! Indeed, I promised not."

Janetta came forward a little, and at her appearance every one looked more or less discomfited. The gentleman on the chair she recognized as a Mr. Strangways, a man of notoriously evil life, who had a house near Beaminster, and was generally shunned by respectable people in the neighborhood. He started up, and looked at her with what she felt to be a rather insolent gaze. Wyvis Brand stood erect, and looked sullen. The other gentleman, who was a stranger, rose from his chair in a civiller manner than his friend had done.

Janetta put her arms round the little fellow, and turned a rather bewildered face towards Mr. Brand. "Was it--was it--medicine?" she asked.

"Of a kind," said Wyvis, with a laugh.

"It was brandy--_eau-de-vie_--horrid hot stuff that _maman_ used to drink," said little Julian, with a burst of angry sobs, "and I promised not--I promised old Susan that I never would!"

"It was only a joke," said the master of the house, coming forward now, and anxious perhaps to avert the storm threatened by a sudden indignant flash of Janetta's great dark eyes. "We were not in earnest of course."

(A smothered laugh and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n from Mr. Strangways pa.s.sed without notice.) "The boy does not know how to take a joke--he's a milksop."

"I'm not! I'm not!" said little Julian, still struggling with violent sobs. "I'm not a milksop! Oh, say that I'm not! Do tell father that I'm not--not----"

"Certainly you are not. You are a very brave little boy, and know how to keep your word," said Janetta, with decision. "And now you must come with me to your grandmother; I came to see _her_ this afternoon."

She gathered him into her strong, young arms as if she would have carried him from the room, but he struggled manfully to keep his feet, although he still held her dress. Without a word, Wyvis strode to the door and held it open for the pair. Janetta forgot to thank him, or to greet him in any way. She swept past him in a transport of silent fury, flashing upon him one look of indignation which Wyvis Brand did not easily forget. It even deafened him for a moment to the sneering comment of Mr. Strangways, which fell on Janetta's ears just as she was leaving the room.

"That's a regular granny's boy. Well for him if he always gets a pretty girl to help him out of a difficulty."

Wyvis, who had stood for a moment as if transfixed by Janetta's glance, hastily shut the door.

Janetta paused in the corridor outside. She was flushed and panting; she felt that she could not present herself to Mrs. Brand in that state. She held the boy close to her, and listened while he poured forth his story in sobbing indistinctness.

"Old Susan--she was their English servant--she had been always with _maman_--she had told him that brandy made people mad and wicked--and he did not want to be mad and wicked--and he had promised Susan never to drink brandy; and the naughty gentleman wanted him to take it, and he would not--would not--would not!----"

"Hush, dear," said Janetta, gently. "There is no need to cry over it.

You know you kept your word as a gentleman should."

The boy's eyes flashed through his tears. "Father thinks I'm a--I'm a milksop," he faltered.

"Show him that you are not," said Janetta. She saw that it was no use to talk to Julian as to a baby. "If you are always brave and manly he won't think so."

"I _will_ be always brave," said the little fellow, choking back his sobs and regarding her with the clear, fearless gaze which she had noticed in him from the first. And at this moment a door opened, and Mrs. Brand, who had heard voices, came out in some surprise to see what was the matter.

Janetta was glad to see the loving way in which the boy ran into his grandmother's arms, and the tenderness with which she received him. Mrs.

Brand courteously invited her guest into the drawing-room, but her attention was given far more to little Julian than to Janetta, and in two minutes he had poured the whole story into her ear. Mrs. Brand did not say much; she sat with him in her lap looking excessively pained and grieved; and that frozen look of pain upon her face made Janetta long--but long in vain--to comfort her. Tea was brought in by-and-bye, and then Julian was dismissed to his nursery--whither he went reluctantly, holding his face up to be kissed by Janetta, and asking her to "come back soon." And when he was gone, Mrs. Brand seemed unable to contain herself any longer, and broke forth pa.s.sionately.

"A curse is on us all--I am sure of that. The boy will be ruined, and by his father too."

"Oh, no," Janetta said, earnestly. "His father would not really hurt him, I feel sure."

"You do not know my son. He is like his own father, my husband--and that is the way my husband began with Wyvis."

"But--he did not succeed?"

"Not altogether, because Wyvis had a strong head, and drew back in time; but his father did him harm--untold harm. His father was a bad man. I do not scruple to say so, although he was my husband; and there is a taint, a sort of wild strain, in the blood. Even the boy inherits it; I see that too clearly. And Wyvis--Wyvis will not hold himself in for long. He is falling amongst those racing and betting men again--the Strangways were always to be feared--and before long he will tread in his father's steps and break my heart, and bring down my grey hairs with sorrow to the grave."

She burst into a pa.s.sion of tears as she spoke. Janetta felt inexpressibly shocked and startled. This revelation of a dark side of life was new and appalling to her. She could hardly understand Mrs.

Brand's dark antic.i.p.ations.

She took the mother's hand and held it gently between her own, uttering some few soothing sentences as she did so. Presently the poor woman's sobs grew quieter, and she returned the pressure of Janetta's hand.

"Thank you, my dear," she said at last. "You have a very kind heart. But it is no use telling me to be comforted. I understand my sons, as I understood my husband before them. They cannot help it. What is in the blood will come out."

"Surely," said Janetta, in a very low tone, "there is always the might and the mercy of G.o.d to fall back upon--to help us when we cannot help ourselves."

"Ah, my dear, if I could believe in that I should be a happier woman,"

said Mrs. Brand, sorrowfully.

Janetta stayed a little longer, and when she went the elder woman allowed herself to be kissed affectionately, and asked in a wistful tone, as Julian had done, when she would come again.

The girl was glad to find that the hall was empty when she crossed it again. She had no fancy for encountering the insolent looks (as she phrased it to herself) of Wyvis Brand and his hateful friends. But she had reckoned without her host. For when she reached the gate into the high-road, she found Mr. Brand leaning against it with his elbows resting on the topmost bar, and his eyes gloomily fixed on the distant landscape. He started when he saw her, raised his hat and opened the gate with punctilious politeness. Janetta bowed her thanks, but without any smile; she was not at all in charity with her cousin, Wyvis Brand.

He allowed her to pa.s.s him, but before she had gone half a dozen yards, he strode after her and caught her up. "Will you let me have a few words with you?" he said, rather hoa.r.s.ely.

"Certainly, Mr. Brand." Janetta turned and faced him, still with the disapproving gravity upon her brow.

"Can't we walk on for a few paces?" said Wyvis, with evident embarra.s.sment. "I can say what I want to say better while we are walking. Besides, they can see us from the house if we stand here."

Privately Janetta thought that this would be no drawback, but she did not care to make objections, so turned once more and walked on silently.

"I want to speak to you," said the man, presently, with something of a shamefaced air, "about the little scene you came upon this afternoon----"

"Yes," said Janetta. She did not know how contemptuously her lips curled as she said the word.

"You came at an unfortunate moment," he went on, awkwardly enough. "I was about to interpose; I should not have allowed Jack Strangways to go too far. Of course you thought that I did not care."

"Yes," said Janetta, straightforwardly. Wyvis bit his lip.

"I am not quite so thoughtless of my son's welfare," he said, in a firmer tone. "There was enough in that gla.s.s to madden a child--almost to kill him. You don't suppose I would have let him take that?"

"I don't know. You were offering no objection to it when I came in."

"Do you doubt my word?" said Wyvis, fiercely.