CHAPTER IV

MONTAGUE FRANCIS DE VERE

"I expect there's a lovely view just round that bend at the top," Nancy said, when they arrived at the road. "Should we take just a peep? It won't take five minutes."

Billy hesitated. When he had made up his mind to go to a certain place he preferred to make steadily for it and not wander off into side roads, but as Mavis added her entreaties to Nancy's he gave way reluctantly.

Nancy mounted Modestine and the little procession set off up the hill. To the left, they caught sight of the chimney-pots of a house, but that was all, until they reached the bend. And then such a view. A long stretch of the Gleam was visible, and the hills, rising out of a mist so faint that it seemed like a veil of light, were more alluring than ever. On their own home side of the river, far, far away beyond the mouth, were mountains peeping out from a dense blue curtain.

Mavis, the artist of the family, was enraptured by the blueness.

"It's like that picture we saw once--you 'member--some little girls with lots of autumn leaves heaped up, and a basket, and the blueness all behind them!" she cried excitedly.

"Yes," Nancy responded, "an' it was so blue I thought it couldn't be real. Now we _know_ it's all right."

They both sighed with delight and satisfaction.

"I say, do look at that boy!" Billy interrupted. "See, over there in the garden!"

The view had entirely absorbed Nancy and Mavis, but they turned with ready interest to learn the cause of that in Billy's voice that promised something worth while.

Standing back from the road they saw the primmest house imaginable, with a garden to correspond. Not a weed was to be seen; not a plant or bush or tree grew there that had any inclination to riot or sprawl. There were neat little rose bushes, but no ramblers; there were stocks, and geraniums, and lobelias in prim little lozenge beds, but no pretty sprawling clarkia or love-in-a-mist or joyous Californian poppy. A neat little laurel hedge divided the flowers from the kitchen garden, where again everything was congruous--everything, that is, except the boy.

He was standing by a bed of beetroots, leaning on a hoe, with his profile towards them. They could not see his eyes, but his face, and indeed, his whole attitude, expressed solemn dejection. Yet that was not the reason why he seemed so utterly out of place in the picture.

"Isn't he dirty!" whispered Mavis, in disgust, for she had a horror of dirt, as Billy knew to his cost. "An' untidy!"

His hands, if he was supposed to be hoeing, might, of course, have been allowed a thin coating of earth, but there was earth on his face, earth on his knees, earth on his clothes. He was about Billy's age, and was wearing a grey flannel suit, grey felt hat, and grey stockings, all very much like Billy's, but, although Billy had no special reputation for either cleanliness or tidiness, he was not to be compared with the little object in the garden whose stockings were slopping over his boots, and whose hat was thrust defiantly at the back of his head.

The children stared in puzzled wonderment. There was something about him that suggested he was not just the gardener's boy, yet what possible connection could such a ragamuffin have with so prim a place?

At this moment the boy dived into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief that was the colour of his hands.

"Isn't he awful?" Mavis whispered, in horror.

"Yes, but I don't believe he's very happy," Nancy replied. "He looks so sad."

Billy giggled.

"'Spect he doesn't like hoeing!" he said. "_I_ don't!"

Nancy shook her head.

"No, it's not that kind of sadness. I know how _you_ look when you have to do weeding; his is more than that--it's _all_ of him that's unhappy."

Just then the boy looked up and met Billy's eye. Neither boy moved or spoke for a moment, then suddenly the young ragamuffin jerked his hat over his eyes, thrust forward his chin, assumed a "Bill Sikes" expression, and lurched defiantly towards the palings.

"What cher want?" he growled, in a voice that sounded volcanic.

"Nothing!" Billy replied, with a grin. "I say, are you fed-up with hoeing?"

The boy hesitated, a little surprised at Billy's friendly tone.

"_You'd_ be," he rumbled, "if you hoed as much as I do. It's weed, weed, weed, and hoe, hoe, hoe, morning, noon, and night. A boy has no play here," he added bitterly. "_She_ says a boy like me needs discipline--an' this is what she gives me!" He paused and looked thoughtful. "'Tisn't _his_ fault," he added, as though talking to himself, "he's sorry for me, but he says it's silly to mind doin' it. Only----" and here his voice grew particularly volcanic, "I wish he wouldn't always be talkin' about courage."

"Courage?" Billy enquired, wondering what it had to do with hoeing.

"Yes. He said there was a boy in a book who heard a man say, ''Tisn't life that matters, but the courage you bring to it.' _I_ dunno what he wants to keep talkin' about it for, and I dunno what it's got to do with weeding." He paused. "Courage!" he added darkly, "guess I know what courage is, as I'd show any boy! I don't need to weed to know _that_!"

Now, hitherto, he had not looked beyond Billy, but, at that moment, his eye fell on Mavis, who was standing with her hand on Modestine's bridle. He stood as though spellbound, with wonder in his big, solemn eyes.

"Don't stare!" Mavis said, in a reproving voice, "it's rude!"

"I'm only just lookin' at you!" he replied, in a voice that was surprisingly humble. "You're very pretty," he added. Silence again. "Would you like an apple? There's an early tree over there," he blurted out.

Mavis looked at his grubby hands.

"No, thank you," she replied promptly. Then fearing that perhaps she had hurt him, "What is your name?" she asked in a kind, fat little voice.

"Montague Francis de Vere," he replied, with a defiant eye on Billy. "Once," he added, reminiscently, "there was a boy who said I'd better add Plantagenet while I was about it. Montague Francis Plantagenet de Vere he called me, just that once, but _not again_!" His eye was still fixed firmly on Billy, who, instead of quailing as apparently he was intended to, merely grinned pleasantly. The ragamuffin leaned over the palings. "And there was another boy," he continued, "who called me Monty--and he was sorry afterwards!"

"Why?" asked Mavis innocently.

"'Cos I _made_ him sorry!" the boy growled.

"Oh, but if I knew you I should call you Monty," Mavis replied.

"Well, _you_ can--sometimes!" Montague growled. "An' so, perhaps, can _she_," with a jerk of his head towards Nancy. "But anybody else," here he again fixed Billy with a defiant eye, "anybody else has to call me Montague or Mont, else they'll be sorry."

Billy chuckled.

"Well, Mont's all right," he said. "I'll call you that."

"What does your mother call you?" asked Nancy.

"I've not got a mother," he replied simply, "nor a father."

"Oh, poor, poor Monty!" the two girls whispered kindly, and Billy sidled up to the boy in a friendly, protective way.

"Ah, now I see why you don't belong to the picture," Nancy added. "It's a horrid, prim picture and it's hurting you, isn't it?"

Montague looked up at her in surprise.

"How d'you know?" he asked. The way in which he said it told so much that their hearts ached for him.

"'Cos I kind of _feel_ it about you--we said so before you turned and saw us. Who do you live with, and how long--how long have you had to live here?" She could not bring herself to ask how long he had been without a father or mother.

"Three months," he replied, in a voice that suggested that the three months had been as three centuries to him. "He's sorry for me to be here; he said he'd hoped to have had a home for Jocelyne and me with somebody who would have been a mother-person to us, but he said they couldn't agree about something or other, an' so there was no mother-person and no home--not yet."

"But who is 'he'?" asked Billy.

"My guardian," Montague replied.

"Is he nice?" asked Mavis.

"Yes, I like him--we're friends. He's going to let me live with him in London in the winter and p'raps Jocelyne, but _she_ doesn't mind being here."

"Who's Jocelyne?" asked Nancy.

"She's my sister." he replied, in a resigned voice. "Sisters are not very nice people," he added bitterly. "They get grown-up and don't mind being prim, and they hate you being a bit dirty, an' it's wash, wash, wash morning, noon an' night."

"_I_ don't like dirty people either," Mavis said. "Billy has to wash _properly_."

Billy giggled, and Montague gazed solemnly first at him and then at Mavis.

"Don't you like _me_?" he growled wistfully.

"I don't know you," Mavis replied. "P'raps I might like you if you were clean," she added kindly.

"Oh, but we do like him, Mavis! We're sorry for him, aren't we?" Nancy said impulsively.

"Yes, of course we're sorry and p'raps you'd be clean if you had a 'mother," Mavis replied gently. "Wouldn't you, Monty?" she added with such a winning smile in her blue eyes that Montague suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to wash and wash until he was as white as snow. Yet, though he would have given much to do so, he could not truthfully own to absolute cleanliness even under his mother's influence. He grew solemn and thoughtful once more.

"Mothers, when they're dead, try to help boys," he began. "There's a boy I know," he went on in his queer, rumbling way, "a boy what sometimes uses bad words an' his mother is an angel an' she comes to him sometimes at night looking all shiny and sorry, an' she says she'll help him not to use 'em."

"And does he manage not to now?" Nancy enquired sympathetically.

"Well, he doesn't use the _very_ bad ones. Mothers," he added abruptly, "are different from aunts. _They_ punish you if you use 'em." His voice grew vindictive. "When I'm grown-up I shall have a son ten years old, and he shall go without cake and jam for a month if he uses them, an' if he slides down banisters or along slippery floors, _then_ he'll be sorry!"

"Oh, but aunts are nice," Mavis interrupted him. "We all love our Aunt Letty; she plays with us and tells us stories--an' she's pretty."

"Well," replied Montague, "great-aunts are different then. _They_ don't ever play with you, neither are they pretty. An' if you have boots that sound nice then they try to make you sorry about them. But," and here his brown eyes suddenly sparkled impishly, "if you've got to wear slippers downstairs you can put your boots on in your bedroom and stride up and down s'much as you like and nobody'll hear you."

"I don't think that sounds very exciting," Mavis said. "I don't like clumsy boots."

Montague looked crestfallen as he gazed first at his own thick-soled boots and then at the trim little shoes Mavis was wearing.

"And is it your great-aunt you live with?" asked Nancy. "Is this her house and is that why it's so prim and neat?"

Montague nodded.

"Yes, it's hers an' she says there won't be much of it left if I'm here much longer. _I_ can't help it if things get in the way. But my guardian says I've got to try and stand it a bit longer; he says he wants to study up the 'responsibilities of parenthood,' or somethin' like that. He says it's all very well to learn gradually to be a parent, but a boy of ten and a girl of fifteen, and him a bachelor of thirty he says isn't an easy situation. He says there should be lectures to meet the case. He's more afraid of Jocelyne than me 'cos women, he says, are unaccountable. He talks to me a lot--he likes talking. Some of it's queer kind of talk, but anyway he likes boys an' that's more'n great-aunts do. An' he plays with me."

"Our Uncle Val plays with us when he's in England, and there was another, a nearly-uncle, who used to play with us," said Mavis.

"Uncle Val's in Egypt now," Billy, who was never tired of talking of his uncle's wanderings, informed Montague. "He's been to Russia, too--he's an adventurer, and so are we!" he added proudly.

"Adventurers?" Montague repeated with interest.

"Yes, we're going to travel with a donkey. We're going to the hills over there." Billy nodded in the direction of the hills.

Montague's interest increased.

"When do you start?" he asked.

"We've started. We've come miles already, an' we're going on for days--_p'raps_ a week."

Montague gazed at the three adventurers with undisguised admiration and respect.

"An' are you going on _now_?" he asked wistfully.

"Yes, an' we'd better hurry. We kind of forgot while we were talking to you. We've miles to go!" Billy was in a tremendous hurry now to be moving.

"An' me here hoeing and weedin' all the summer holidays! Me stuck in this garden with nobody to play with!" Montague's voice was so sad and his words called up so gloomy a picture that instinctively the same thought swept through each of the three children. Billy voiced it.

"I say, come with us!"

"Do come!" added Nancy.

"Yes, we'd like you to come, Monty," Mavis added sweetly, "only you will wash yourself first, won't you?"

Montague's usually solemn eyes literally danced with joy.

"I'll be ready in less'n a minute!" he cried, and dropping the hoe, he ran swiftly down the garden. A moment later, they saw him on the other side of the laurel hedge running along a path in the flower garden.

"He's going to that gold-fish pond in the middle of the lawn there! Oh, do look!" Billy chuckled in enjoyment. "If the great-aunt saw him now wouldn't her hair fly!"

Montague was kneeling on the stone edge of the pond dipping his earthy hands into the clear water. Next he pulled out the grimy handkerchief, swished it about amongst the goldfish, and smeared it over his face. Satisfied with the result, he thrust the handkerchief back into his pocket and came bounding towards them.

"Now I'm ready!" he cried joyfully. "Let's start!"

Mavis eyed him critically.

"Oh, you awful, awful boy," she sighed. "You're worse than before. You _can't_ come like that."

Montague sighed, too.

"You're never pleased with me," he rumbled unhappily, "an' _I_ think you're so pretty."

Mavis felt a little ashamed. She thought a moment.

"Here, quick," she said, pulling out her own dainty little handkerchief. "Run and dip that in the pond and bring it to me. _I'll_ wash your face."

Montague hesitated miserably. Washing was bad enough in itself, but could he possibly submit to the terrible indignity of being washed by a girl--even if she did happen to be the prettiest little girl he had ever seen. Was it, after all, worth while?

"Hurry, Monty, there's a good boy, else somebody may come and stop us," Mavis said anxiously.

The adorable motherliness behind the anxiety half decided Montague. He glared hard at Billy, defying him to laugh.

"_I've_ been through it," Billy sighed, with his happy grin. "Girls are tyrants--specially sisters!"

Montague, with a mixture of defiance and subjection in his walk, returned to the pond, dipped the tiny handkerchief in the water and brought it back to Mavis.

"I won't hurt you," she said kindly, as she wiped away the water-marks.

Not hurt him? Montague writhed inwardly under the hurt to his pride. Why he submitted he hardly knew; certainly, it was the last thing he would have imagined himself doing.

"Why, you're quite nice-looking now you're clean!" Mavis said, surveying her handiwork with pride. "Run an' wash my handky quick--then we're ready."

Montague departed with glowing cheeks and sparkling eyes.

"She said I'm nice-looking!" he told himself joyfully as he flew to the pond. Why, it was almost worth while to be clean after all.