A True Friend Part 19

"No. I believe you, if you mean really to say that you were not going to allow your little boy to drink what Mr. Strangways offered him."

"I do mean to say it"--in a tone of hot anger.

Janetta was silent.

"Have you nothing to say, Miss Colwyn?"

"I have no right to express any opinion, Mr. Brand."

"But I wish for it!"

"I do not see why you should wish for it," said Janetta, coldly, "especially when it may not be very agreeable to you to hear."

"Will you kindly tell me what you mean?" The words were civil, but the tone was imperious in the extreme.

"I mean that whether you were going to make Julian drink that poisonous stuff or not, you were inflicting a horrible torture upon him," said Janetta, as hotly as Wyvis himself could have spoken. "And I cannot understand how you could allow your own child to be treated in that cruel way. I call it wicked to make a child suffer."

Had she looked at her companion, she would have seen that his face had grown a little whiter than usual, and that he had the pinched look about his nostrils which--as his mother would have known--betokened rage. But she did not look; and, although he paused for a moment before replying, his voice was quite calm when he spoke again.

"Torture? Suffering? These are very strong words when applied to a little harmless teasing."

"I do not call it harmless teasing when you are trying to make a child break a promise that he holds sacred."

"A very foolish promise!"

"I am not so sure of that."

"Do you mean to insult me?" said Wyvis, flus.h.i.+ng to the roots of his hair.

"Insult you? No; certainly not. I don't know why you should say so!"

"Then I need not explain," he answered drily, though still with that flush of annoyance on his face. "Perhaps if you think over what you have heard of that boy's antecedents, you will know what I mean."

It was Janetta's turn to flush now. She remembered the stories current respecting old Mr. Brand's drinking habits, and the rumors about Mrs.

Wyvis Brand's reasons for living away from her husband. She saw that her words had struck home in a manner which she had not intended.

"I beg your pardon," she said involuntarily; "I never meant--I never thought--anything--I ought not to have spoken as I did."

"You had much better say what you mean," was the answer, spoken with bitter brevity.

"Well, then, I will." Janetta raised her eyes and looked at him bravely.

"After all, I am a kinswoman of yours, Mr. Brand, and little Julian is my cousin too; so I _have_ some sort of a right to speak. I never thought of his antecedents, as you call them, and I do not know much about them; but if they were--if they had been not altogether what you wish them to be--don't you see that this very promise which you tried to make him break was one of his best safeguards?"

"The promise made by a child is no safeguard," said Wyvis, doggedly.

"Not if he is forced to break it!" exclaimed Janetta, with a touch of fire.

They walked on in silence for a minute or two, and then Wyvis said,

"Do you believe in a promise made by a child of that age?"

"Little Julian has made me believe in it. He was so thoroughly in earnest. Oh, Mr. Brand, do you think that it was right to force him to do a thing against his conscience in that way?"

"You use hard words for a very simple thing, Miss Colwyn," said Wyvis, in a rather angry tone. "The boy was not forced--I had no intention of letting him drink the brandy."

"No," said Janetta, indignantly. "You only let him think that he was to be forced to do it--you only made him lose faith in you as his natural protector, and believe that you wished him to do what he thought wrong!

And you say there was no cruelty in that?"

Wyvis Brand kept silence for some minutes. He was impressed in spite of himself by Janetta's fervor.

"I suppose," he said, at last, "that the fact is--I don't know what to do with a child. I never had any teaching or training when I was a child, and I don't know how to give it. I know I'm a sort of heathen and savage, and the boy must grow up like me--that is all."

"It is often said to be a heathen virtue to keep one's word," said Janetta, with a half smile.

"Therefore one that I can practice, you mean? Do you always keep your word when you give it?"

"I try to."

"I wish I could get you to give your word to do one thing."

"What is that?"

Wyvis spoke slowly. "You see how unfit I am to bring up a child--I acknowledge the unfitness--and yet to send him away from us would almost break my mother's heart--you see that."

"Yes."

"Will not you sometimes look in on us and give us a word of advice or--or--rebuke? You are a cousin, as you reminded me, and you have the right. Will you help us a little now and then?"

"You would not like it if I did."

"Was I so very savage? I have an awful temper, I know. But I am not quite so black as I'm painted, Miss Colwyn. I do want to do the best for that boy--if I knew how----"

"Witness this afternoon," said Janetta, with good-humored satire.

"Well, that shows that I _don't_ know how. Seriously, I am sorry--I can't say more. Won't you stand our friend, Cousin Janetta?"

It was the first time he had addressed her in that way.

"How often am I to be asked to be somebody's friend, I wonder!" said Janetta to herself, with a touch of humor. But she answered, quite gravely, "I should like to do what I can--but I'm afraid there is nothing that I can do, especially"--with a sudden flush--"if your friends--the people who come to your house--are men like Mr.

Strangways."

Wyvis looked at her sideways, with a curious look upon his face.

"You object to Mr. Strangways?"

"He is a man whom most people object to."

"Well--if I give up Mr. Strangways and his kind----"