The Ripper's Wife(37)
“Mama’s a silly goose.” I laughed. “She always cries over that story!”
“You see, my dears”—Jim took his handkerchief and gently dried Gladys’s eyes, then passed it to me, to dry Bobo’s and mine—“you must always remember that no matter how beautiful you are on the outside, and you are both as beautiful as angels, it is the beauty inside that matters far more. Even when stripped of all his gold and jewels, the Happy Prince was still beautiful, more beautiful, in fact, in his shabbiness than he was in his splendor. Outer beauty withers and fades, but internal beauty lasts forever. You must always endeavor to be kind, thoughtful, and generous. Whenever you feel spite or selfishness encroaching, you must always stop and remember the story of the Happy Prince; it holds the key to true happiness. Remember how the little swallow was warmed by his good deeds and you shall never be cold inside.” He kissed Gladys’s brow, then reached over to caress Bobo’s cheek.
“Come, my dear.” Jim took my hand. “We will leave these young people to Nanny Yapp now. I shouldn’t have made you cry.” He traced the curve of my damp cheek. “But I thought this a very important lesson for our little princess, and prince, to learn before this ostentatious to-do we’re about to have. I want them to behave with the same nobility of spirit as the Happy Prince, not like his conceited and selfish courtiers, when the house is filled with their little guests. I should like very much to hear tomorrow what a gracious little hostess our Gladys is, that she behaved with all the nobility of a princess and none of the haughtiness.”
“You are so good to me!” I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him. “To all of us! Oh, Jim, I love you so! We love you so!” I cried as the children, echoing my sentiments, flung their arms around his legs and hugged him fiercely.
Jim had just finished fastening the delicate necklace of pink diamond flowers around my neck and admiring my new dress of lilac velvet with a sumptuous beribboned pile of pale pink silk roses on the bustle when a scream sent us scurrying back to the nursery.
I flung open the door and looked where Gladys was pointing. Bobo was sitting cross-legged on the floor, still in his little nightgown, with The Happy Prince open before him to the picture of the Prince in his gilt armor with the swallow perched upon his shoulder. My darling’s beautiful long black ringlets lay scattered on the floor all around him. He’d cut them off in imitation of the Prince’s medieval bob. Bobo was just snipping off the last one when I ran in.
“What have you done?” I screamed, and Jim had to catch me before I fell.
Bobo’s face wore such a gleeful expression as he shook his head vigorously, like a dog after a bath, and he leapt up and ran to me.
“Don’t cry, Mama,” he said. “I’m seven years old—too big for curls! I have to tuck them up under my hat to keep the big boys in the park from pulling them and calling me a sissy. They make fun of my clothes too; they chase after me pointing and shouting, ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy!,’ and if they catch me they knock my hat off and hold me down and stretch my curls out and let them spring back while they laugh and call me names. Once they even made me pull my pants down to prove I wasn’t a girl. I hate it, Mama. I hate the way I look! And as angry as I am, I can’t shout at them or hit them, because inside I’m laughing at me too. Sometimes I have nightmares—I see myself going off to university in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit with my hair in long curls and everybody pointing and laughing at me, or I see myself going to work at Papa’s office, a grown man but still in those silly suits and curls, or getting married, standing at the altar with the bride with my hair in ringlets just like hers, the people in the pews pointing and jeering that the groom looks prettier than the bride in his lace and velvet! Oh, Mama!” He grasped my hand and gazed up at me with those beautiful melted-chocolate eyes framed by the longest lashes I’d ever seen in my life. “I don’t want to be Little Lord Fauntleroy, I just want to be me, and I can’t with those long girly curls and sissy suits!”
“It’s true, ma’am,” Nanny Yapp placidly volunteered. “The older boys have been tormenting him for quite some time and he has shown remarkable fortitude and restraint in dealing with them. You should be proud of him.”
“You!” I rounded on her. “You mean to tell me you just stood there twiddling your thumbs and let him do this to himself?” I brandished a hand at Bobo’s new bob. “Why didn’t you stop him? He could have hurt himself with those scissors! He might have cut his ear off or put his eye out!”
“It was time, ma’am. He’d already kept his curls longer than most boys do; they are customarily cropped at five,” Nanny Yapp said, then turned to my husband for affirmation. “Don’t you agree, Sir Jim?”
To my horror, Jim agreed wholeheartedly, then turned to me, saying gently, “Like it or not, those curls had to go, my dear. I was planning to talk to you about it. I was going to take Bobo to my barber, but . . .” He knelt down and, like one gentleman to another, offered Bobo his hand to shake. “That’s a fine job you’ve done, Son; I daresay no barber could have done better. You look wonderfully grown-up; Mama shall have to get you some new clothes. Won’t that be fun, Bunny? You can take Bobo to Woollright’s tomorrow for a whole new wardrobe more befitting of his maturity!”