Young Phillip Maddison Read Free Page B

had smiled. He puzzled her, she said. He had always puzzled her.
    â€œWhy, even when you were nine months old, your baby face was filled with fear! You stared just as you are staring at me now. Your eyes were always filled with fear, you started at the least sound, you had, even at that age, a guilty look in those large eyes of yours! Why, why, why?”
    â€œI don’t know, Aunt Victoria”.
    â€œWell, buck up, old chap, that’s my advice to you. Keep a tight rein on yourself. Don’t do things which annoy your Father. He has a lot to put up with in his life, you know! No man wants a son who is always telling fibs, who is never to be trusted, who is always peeping and prying into other people’s affairs! I had you here to stay as I hoped you would be able to benefit from different surroundings, but I cannot and will not have Adele taught ways and expressions of a street boy. And you must learn not to cry at the least reproof, it isn’t at all manly, you know. Will you promise me, if I let the matter go no further, that you will never again use that expression?”
    â€œYes, Aunt Victoria.”
    â€œVery well, then, we’ll say no more about it, this time. But if it occurs again, I shall have to send you home. Now go to your cousin Adele, and beg her pardon.”
    Phillip had gone out of the morning room, and said to Adele that he was sorry. Then he had tip-toed upstairs to his bedroom, packed his bag, tip-toed down again, and so away from the house, to run most of the way to Epsom station and, with his return ticket, back to London, and home. That was during theChristmas holidays; and after a “wigging” from his father, and an enforced letter of apology to Aunt Victoria, the matter had ended.
    *
    Looking at himself somewhat anxiously in the glass, Phillip tried to arrange his small face so that it would look larger, and so resemble one belonging to a manly figure, with out-jutting chin, and stiff upper lip. This was rather difficult to do: for his jaw could only be made to stick out by putting his lower teeth over the upper, and then his lips almost disappeared, and the upper lip was not only too stiff, but flat. If only he were good-looking, like Milton, who was a friend of the Rolls’!
    Ah well, it was no good hoping that he could alter his face; but he could alter his habits. That was the only way to get into the good books of Mr. and Mrs. Rolls. In future, he swore to himself, he would always behave like a little gentleman. He would turn over a new leaf. He would learn the Collect on Sundays without being badgered to do it by Mother. He would reform himself from swearing, and become a choir boy. Visions of the benefits of reformation filled his mind. He might even be chosen, in time, to sing the anthem on Sunday evenings at St. Simon’s Church, where Mother sometimes took him on Sunday evening to listen to the Rev. Mr. Mundy. Milton was the head choir-boy there; perhaps his own voice, if he trained it properly, would soar up to the roof, like Milton’s did. O, for the Wings, for the Wings of a Dove! Hearing the new voice, perhaps when Milton was taken suddenly ill, Helena Rolls, in her rented pew, would sit entranced. Afterwards Mrs. Rolls would say “Was that really Phillip stepping into the breach, with that beautiful clear voice? Oh, we must ask him to tea, Gerard,’—
    At this point Phillip began to feel hot all over with a kind of fear.
    For in Phillip’s eyes Mr. Gerard Rolls was a figure as grand as he was aloof. He was extremely handsome, tall and straight, always very well dressed, always affable, a very distinguished person indeed. He always was the same—never angry, or cross, or anything but very well bred. To sit in the same room as such a tall, blue-eyed, twisted-moustached man was—unthinkable. Phillip’s fingers trembled at the stitched stud-holes. Careful!
    Having brushed his wet hair flat, he put on his Eton jacket,