“Ashton Vineyard, Virginia.September 30th.
“MY DEAREST BABIE,—I have left you too long without tidings, but I have had little time, and no heart to write, and I could not bear to send such news without details. Of the ten terrible days at Abville I may, if I can, tell you when we meet. I was in a sort of country house a little above the valley of the shadow of death, preparing supplies, and keeping beds ready for any of the exhausted workers who could snatch a rest in the air of the hill. I scarcely saw my poor Janet. She had made out that her husband had been one of the first victims, before she even guessed at his being there. She only came once to tell me this, and they would not even allow me to come down to the Church, where all the clergy, doctors and sisters who could, used to meet, every morning and evening.
“On the tenth day she brought home Jock, smitten down after incessant exertion. Everyone allows that he saved more cases than anyone, though he says it was the abatement of the disease. Janet declares that his was a slight attack. If that was slight! She attended to him for two days, then told me the crisis was past and that he would live, and almost at the same time her strength failed her. The last thing she said consciously to me was, ‘Don’t waste time on me. I know these symptoms. Attend to Jock. That is of use. Only forgive and pray for me.’ Very soon she was insensible, and was gone before twenty-four hours were over. The sister whom they spared to help me, said she was too much worn out to struggle and suffer like most, indeed as Jock had done.
“That Sister Dorothea, a true divine gift, a sweet and fair vision of peace, is a Miss Ashton, a Virginian. She broke down, not with the disease, only fatigue, and I gave her such care as I could spare from my dear boy. When her father, General Ashton, came to take her home, he kindly insisted on likewise carrying us off to his beautiful home, on a lovely hillside, where we trusted Jock’s strength would be restored quickly. But perhaps we were too impatient, for the journey was far too much for him. He fainted several times, and the last miles were passed in an unconscious state. There has come back on him the intermittent fever which often succeeds the disease; and what is more alarming is the faintness, oppression, and difficulty of breathing, which he believes to be connected with the slight affection of heart remaining from his rheumatic fever at Schwarenbach. Then it is very difficult to give him nourishment except disguised with ice, and he is altogether fearfully ill. I send such an account of the case as I can get for John or Dr. Medlicott to see. How I long for our kind home friends. This place is unhappily very far from everywhere, a lone village in the hills; the nearest doctor twelve miles off. The Ashtons think highly of him; but he is old, and I can’t say that I have any confidence in his treatment. Jock allows that he should do otherwise, but he says he has no vigour or connection of ideas to be fit to treat himself consistently, and that he should only do harm by interfering with Dr. Vanbro; indeed I fear he thinks that it does not make much difference. If patience and calmness can bring him through, he would live, but my dear Babie, I greatly dread that I shall not bring him back to the home he made so bright. He seldom rouses into talking much, but lies passive and half dozing when the feverish restlessness is not on him. He told me just now to send his love to you all, especially to the Monk and Sydney, with all dear good wishes to them both. No one can be kinder than the Ashtons; they are always trying to help in the nursing, and sending for everything that can be thought of for Jock. Sister Dorothea and Primrose are as good and loving as Sydney herself could be, and there is an excellent clergyman who comes in every day, and prays for my boy in Church. Ask them to do the same at Fordham, and at our own Churches. As long as I do not telegraph, remember that while there is life there is hope.
“Your loving Mother C.”
This letter was sent on to John. Two days later a fly drove up to the Dower House, and Sydney walked into the drawing-room alone.
Where did she come from?
From Liverpool. John was gone to America.
“I wanted to go too,” she said, tears coming into her eyes; “but he said he could go faster without me, and he could not take me to these Ashtons, or leave me alone in New York.”
“It was very noble and good in you to let him go, Sydney,” cried Babie.
“It would have broken his heart for ever,” said Sydney, “if he had not tried to do his utmost for Jock. He says Jock has been more than a brother to him, and that he owes all that he is, and all that he has, to him and Mother Carey, and that even—if—if he were too late, he should save her from coming home alone. You think he was right, mamma?”
“Right indeed, and I am thankful that my Sydney was unselfish, and did not try to keep him back.”
“O mamma, I could never have looked him in the face again if I had hindered him! And so we went up to London, and luckily Dr. Medlicott was at home, and he was very eager that John should go. He says he does not think it will be too late, and they talked it over, and got some medicines, and then John let me come down to Liverpool with him and see him on board, and we telegraphed the last thing to Mrs. Brownlow, so that it might be too late for her to stop him.”
While that message was rushing on its way beneath the Atlantic it was the early morning of the ebb tide of the fever, and the patient was resting almost doubled over with his head on pillows before him, either slumber or exhaustion, so still, that his mother had yielded to urgent persuasion, and lain down in the next room to sleep in the dreamless repose of the overworn watcher.
For over him leant a sturdy, dark-browed, dark-bearded figure, to whom she had ventured to entrust him. Some fourteen hours before, Robert had with some difficulty found them out at Ashton Vineyard, having been irresistibly drawn by Jock’s telegram to spend in the States an interval of leisure in his work, caused by his appointment as principal to another Japanese college. He had gone to the bank where Jock had given an address, and his consternation had been great on hearing the state of things. All this, however, he had left unexplained, and his mother had hardly even thought of asking where he had dropped from. For Jock was in the midst of one of his cruellest attacks of the fever, and all she had been conscious of was a knock and summons to the door, where Primrose Ashton gently whispered, “Here is some one you will be glad to see,” and Robert’s low deep voice, almost inaudible with emotion, asked, “May I see him?”
“He will not know you,” she said, with the sad composure of one who has no time to grieve. But even in the midst of the babbling moan of fevered weakness, there was half a smile as of pleased surprise, and an evident craving for the strong support of his brother’s arm, and by-and-by Jock looked up with meaning and recognition in his eyes, though quite unable to speak, in that faint and exhausted state indeed that verged nearer to death after every attack.
This had passed enough for her to know there would be a respite for perhaps a good many hours, and she had yielded to the entreaty or command of Bobus, that she would lie down and sleep, trusting to him to call her at any moment.
Presently, as morning light stole in, Jock’s eyes were open, gazing at him fondly, and he whispered, “Dear old Bob,” then presently, “Open the window.”
The sun was rising, and the wooded hillside opposite was all one gorgeous mass of autumn colouring, of every shade from purple to golden yellow, so glorious that it arrested Bobus’s attention even at that instant.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” asked the feeble voice.
“Wonderful, as we always heard.”
“Lift me a little. I like to see it. Not fast—or high—so.”
Bobus raised the white wasted form, and rested the head against his square firm shoulder. “Dear old Bob! This is jolly! I’m not cramping you?”
“O no, but should not you have something?”
“What time is it?”
“6.30.”
“Too soon yet for that misery;” then, after some silence, “I’m so glad you are come. Can you take mother home?”
“I would; but you will.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Now, Jock, you are not getting into Armine’s state of mind, giving yourself up and wishing to die?”
“Not at all. There are hosts of things I want to do first. There’s that discovery of father’s. With what poor Janet told me of Hermann’s doings, and what I saw at Abville, if I could only get an hour of my proper wits, I could put the others up to a wrinkle that would make the whole thing comparatively plain.”
“Should not you be better if you dictated it, and got it off your mind?”
“So I thought and tried, but presently I saw mother looking queer, and she said I was tired, and had gone on enough. I made her read it to me afterwards, and I had gone off into a muddle, and said something that would have been sheer murder. So I had better leave it alone. Old Vanbro mistrusts every word I say because of the Hermann connection, and indeed I may not always have talked sense to him. Those things work out in God’s own time, and the Monk is on the track. I’d like to have seen him, but I’ve got you.”
This had been said in faint slow utterances, so low that Bobus could hardly have heard a couple of feet further off, and with intervals between, and there was a gesture of tender perfect content in the contact with him that went to his heart, and, before he was aware, a great hot tear came dropping down on Jock’s forehead and caused an exclamation.
“I beg your pardon,” said Bobus. “Oh! Jock, you don’t know what it is to find you like this. I came with so much to ask and talk of to you.”
Jock looked up inquiringly.
“You were right to suppress that paper of mine,” continued Bobus, “I wouldn’t have written it now. I have seen better what a people are without Christianity, be the code what it may, and the civilisation, it can’t produce such women as my mother, no, nor such men as you, Jockey, my boy,” he muttered much lower.
“Are you coming back, dear old man?” said Jock, with eyes fixed on him.
“I don’t know. Tell me one thing, old man: I always thought, when you took to using your brains and getting up physical science, that you must get beyond what satisfied you as a soldier. Now, have the two, science and religion, never clashed, or have you kept them apart?”
“They’ve worked in together,” said Jock.
“You don’t say so because you ought, and think it good for me?”
“As if I could, lying here. ‘All Thy works praise Thee, O God, and Thy saints do magnify Thee.’”
Bobus was not sure whether this were a conscious reply, or only wandering, and his mother here came in, wakened by the murmur of voices.
The brothers could not bear to lose sight of one another, though Jock was too much exhausted by this conversation, and, by the sickness that followed any endeavour to take food, to speak much again. Thus, when the Rector came, Bobus asked whether he must be sent out of the room, Jock made an earnest sign to the contrary, and he stayed.
There was of course nothing to concern him, especially in the brief reading and prayer; but his mother, looking up, saw that he was finding out the passage in the little Greek Testament.
Janet’s lay on a little table close by the bedside. The two copies had met again. The work of one was done. Was the work of the other doing at last?
However that might be, nothing could be gentler, tenderer, or more considerate towards his mother than was Bobus, and her kind friends felt much relieved of their fears for her, since she had such a son to take care of her.
Towards the evening, the negro servant knocked at the door, and Bobus took from him a telegram envelope. His mother opened it and read:
“Friar Brownlow to Mrs. Brownlow. I embark to-day.”
A smile shone out on Jock’s white weary face, and he said, “Good old Monk! If I can but hold out till he comes, I shall get home again yet. I should like to do him credit.”
“Ashton Vineyard, October l2th.
“MY DEAREST CHILD,—You know the main fact by telegram, and now I can write, I must tell you all in more order. We thought our darkest hour was over when the dear John’s telegram came, and the hope helped us up a little while. To Jock himself it was like a drowning man clinging to a rope with the more exertion because he knew that a boat was putting off. At least so it was at first, but as his strength faded, his brain could not grasp the notion any longer, and he generally seemed to be fancying himself on the snow with Armine, still however looking for John to come and save them, and sometimes, too, talking about Cecil, and being a true brother in arms, a faithful servant and soldier. The long severe strain of study, work, and all the rest which he has gone through, body and mind, coming on a heart already not quite sound, throughout the past year, was, John thinks, the real reason of his being unable to rally when the fever had brought him down, after the dreadful exertion at Abville. Dear fellow, he never let us guess how much his patience cost him. I think we had looked to John’s arrival as if it would act like magic, and it was very sore disappointment when his treatment was producing no change for the better, but the prostration went on day after day. Poor Bobus was in utter despair, and went raging about, declaring that he had been a fool ever to expect anything from Kencroft, and at last he had to be turned out of the sick-room. For I should tell you that the one thing that kept me up was the entire calm grave composure that John preserved throughout, and which gave him the entire command. He never showed any consternation or dismay, nor uttered an augury, but he went quietly and vigilantly on, in a manner that all along gave me a strange sense of confidence and trust, that all that could be done was being done, and the issue was in higher hands. He would not let anyone really help him but Sister Dorothea, with her trained skill as a nurse. I don’t think even I should have been suffered in the room, if he had not thought Jock might be more conscious than was apparent, for he had not himself received one token of recognition all those three days. Poor Bobus! the little gleam of light that Jock had let in on him seemed all gone. I do not know what would have become of him but for the good Ashtons. He had been persuaded for a time that what was so real to Jock must be true; but when Jock was no longer conscious, he had nothing to help him, and I am afraid he spoke terrible words when Primrose talked of prayer and faith. I believe he declared that to see one like his brother snatched away when just come to the perfection of his early manhood, with all his capacity and all his knowledge in vain, convinced him either that this universe was one grim, pitiless machine, grinding down humanity by mere law of necessity, or if they would have it that there was supernatural power, it could only be malevolent; and then Primrose, so strong in faith as to venture what I should have shrunk from as dangerous presumption, dared him to go on in his disbelief, if his brother were given back to prayer.
“She pitied him so much, the sweet bright girl, she had so pitied him all along, that I believe she prayed as much for him as for Jock.
“Of course I did not know all this till afterwards, for all was stillness in that room, except when at times the clergyman came in and prayed.
“The next thing I am sure of, was John’s leaning over me, and his low steady voice saying, ‘The pulse is better, the symptoms are mitigating.’ Sister Dorothea says they had both seen it for some hours, but he made her a sign not to agitate me till he was secure that the improvement was real. Indeed there was something in that equable firm gentleness of John’s that sustained me, and prevented my breaking down. Even then it was another whole day before my darling smiled at me again, and said, ‘Thanks’ to John, but oh! with such a look.
“When Bobus heard his brother was better, he gave a sob, such as I shall never forget, and rushed away into the pine-wood on the hillside, all alone. The next time I saw him he was walking in the garden with Primrose, and with such a quieted, subdued, gentle look upon his face, it put me in mind of the fields when a great storm has swept over them, and they are lying still in the sunshine afterwards.
“Since that day, when John said we might send off that thankworthy telegram, there has been daily progress. I have had one of my headaches. That monarch John found it out, and turned me out. I could bear to go, for I knew my boy was safe with him. He made me over to Primrose, who nursed me as tenderly as my Babie could have done, and indeed, I begin to think she will soon be as near and dear to me as my Sydney or Elvira. She has a power over Bobus that no one else ever had, and she is very lovely in expression as well as features, but how will so ardent a Christian as she is receive one still so far off as my poor Robert, though indeed I think he has at least come so far as the cry, ‘Help Thou mine unbelief.’
“So now they have let me come back to my Jock, and I see visibly his improvement. He holds out his hand, and he smiles, and he speaks now and then, the dreadful oppression is gone, and all the dangerous symptoms are abating, and I cannot tell how happy and thankful we are. ‘Send my love, and tell Sydney she has a blessed Monk,’ he says, as he wakes, and sees me writing.
“That dear Monk says he will not go home till he can carry home his patient. When that will be I cannot tell, for he cannot sit up in bed yet. Dear Sydney, how I thank her! John says it was not his treatment, but, under Divine Providence, youthful nature that had had her rest, and begun to rally her strength. But under that blessing, it was John’s steady, faithful strength and care that enabled the restoration to take place.
“My dear child’s loving
“MOTHER CAREY.”
Whatever page we turn,However much we learn,Let there be something left to dream of still.Longfellow.
It was on a very cold day of the cold spring of 1879 that three ladies descended at the Liverpool station, escorted by a military-looking gentleman. He left them standing while he made inquiries, but his servant had anticipated him. “The steamer has been signalled, my Lord. It will be in about four o’clock.”
“There will be time to go to the hotel and secure rooms,” said one lady.
“Oh, Reeves can do that. Pray let us come down to the docks and see them come in.”
No answer till all four were seated in a fly, rattling through the street, but on the repetition of “Are we going to the docks?” his Lordship, with a resolute twirl of his long, light moustache, replied, “No, Sydney. If you think I am going to have you making a scene on deck, falling on your husband’s breast, and all that sort of thing, you are much mistaken! I shall lodge you all quietly in the hotel, and you may wait there, while I go down with Reeves, and receive them like a rational being.”
“Really, Cecil, that’s too bad. He let me come on board!”
“Do you think I should have brought you here if I had thought you meant to make yourself ridiculous?”
“It is of no use, Sydney,” said Babie; “there’s no dealing with the stern and staid pere de famille. I wonder what he would have liked Essie to do, if he had had to go and leave her for nearly two months when he had only been married a week?”
“Essie is quite a different thing—I mean she has sense and self-possession.”
“Mamma, won’t you speak for us?” implored Sydney. “I did behave so well when he went! Nobody would have guessed we hadn’t been married fifty years.”
“Still I think Cecil is quite right, and that it may be better for them all to manage the landing quietly.”
“Without a pack of women,” said Cecil. “Here we are! I hope you will find a tolerable room for him and no stairs.”
As if poor Mrs. Evelyn were not well enough used to choosing rooms for invalids!
Twilight had come, the gas had been turned on, and the three anxious ladies stood in the window gazing vainly at endless vehicles, when the door opened and they beheld sundry figures entering.
Sydney and Barbara flew, the one to her husband, the other to her mother, and presently all stood round the fire looking at one another. Mrs. Evelyn made a gesture to a very slender and somewhat pale figure to sit down in a large easy chair.
“Thank you, I’m not tired,” he briskly said, standing with a caressing hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Here’s Cecil can’t quite believe yet that I have the use of my limbs.”
“Yes,” said John, “no sooner did he come on board, than he made a rush at the poor sailor who had broken his leg, and was going to be carried ashore on a hammock. He was on the point of embracing him, red beard and all, when he was forcibly dragged off by Jock himself whom he nearly knocked down.”
“Well,” said Cecil, as Sydney fairly danced round him in revengeful glee, “there was the Monk solicitously lifting him on one side, and Mother Carey assisting with a smelling-bottle on the other, so what could I suppose?”
“All for want of us,” said Sydney.
“And think of the cunning of him,” added Babie; “shutting us up here that he might give way to his feelings undisturbed!”
“I promised to go and speak about that poor fellow at the hospital,” cried John, with sudden recollection.
“You had better let me,” said Jock.
“You will stay where you are.”
“I consider him my patient.”
“If that’s the way you two fought over your solitary case all the way home,” said Babie, “I wonder there’s a fragment left of him.”
“It was only three days ago,” said John, “and Jock has been a new man ever since he picked the poor fellow up on deck, but I’m not going to let him stir to-night.”
“Let me come with you, Johnny,” entreated Sydney; “it will be so nice! Oh, no, I don’t mind the cold!”
“Here,” added her brother, “take the poor fellow a sovereign.”
“In compensation for the sudden cooling of your affection,” said Jock. “Well, if it is an excuse for an excursion with Sydney I’ll not interfere, but ask him for his sister’s address in London, for I promised to tell her about him.”
“Oh,” cried Babie, at the word ‘London,’ “then you have heard from Dr. Medlicott?”
“I did once,” said John, “with some very useful suggestions, but that was a month ago or more.”
“I meant,” said Babie, “a letter he wrote for the chance of Jock’s getting it before he sailed. There’s the assistant lectureship vacant, and the Professor would not like anyone so much. It is his own appointment, not an election matter, and he meant to keep it open till he could get an answer from Jock.”
“When was this?” asked Jock, flushing with eagerness.
“The 20th. Dr. Medlicott came down to Fordham for Sunday, to ask if it was worth while to telegraph, or if I thought you would be well enough. It is not much of a salary, but it is a step, and Dr. Medlicott knows they would put you on the staff of the hospital, and then you are open to anything.”
Jock drew a long breath and looked at his mother. “The very thing I’ve wished,” he said.
“Exactly. Must he answer at once?”
“The Professor would like a telegram, yes or no, at once.”
“Then, you wedded Monk, will you add to your favours by telegraphing for me?”
“Yes. Of course it is ‘Yes’. How soon should you have to begin, I wonder?”
“Oh, I’m quite cheeky enough for that sort of work. If you’ll telegraph, I’ll write by to-night’s post.”
“I’ll go and do the telegraphing,” said Cecil; “I don’t trust those two.”
“As if John ever made mistakes,” cried Sydney.
“In fact, I want to send a telegram home.”
“To frighten Essie. She will get a yellow envelope saying you accept a lectureship, and the Professor urgent inquiries after his baby.”
“Sydney is getting too obstreperous, Monk,” said Cecil. “You had better carry her off. I shall come back by the time you have written your letters, Jock.”
“Those two are too happy to do anything but tease one another,” said Mrs. Evelyn, as the door shut on the three. “My rival grandmother, as Babie calls her, was really quite glad to get rid of Cecil; she declared he would excite Esther into a fever.”
“He did alarm Her Serenity herself,” said Babie, laughing. “When she would go on about grand sponsors and ancestral names, he told her that he should carry the baby off to Church and have him christened Jock out of hand, and what a dreadful thing that would be for the peerage. I believe she thought he meant it.”
“The name is to be John,” said Mrs. Evelyn—“John Marmaduke. He has secured his godmother”—laying a hand affectionately on Babie—“but I must not forestall his request to his two earliest and best friends.”
“Dear old fellow!” murmured Jock.
“Everybody is somewhat frantic,” said Barbara.
“Jock’s varieties of classes were almost distracted and besieged the door, till Susan was fain to stick the last bulletins in the window to save answering the bell; then no sooner did they hear he was better than they began getting up a testimonial. Percy Stagg wrote to me, to ask for his crest for some piece of plate, and I wrote back that I was sure Dr. Lucas Brownlow would like it best to go in something for the Mission Church; and if they wanted to give him something for his very own, suppose they got him a brass plate for the door?”
“Bravo, Infanta; that was an inspiration!”
“So they are to give an alms-dish, and Ali and Elfie give the rest of the plate. Dr. Medlicott says he never saw anything like the feeling at the hospital, or does not know what the nurses don’t mean to get up by way of welcome.”
“My dear Babie, you must let Jock write his letters,” interposed her mother, who had tears in her eyes and saw him struggling with emotion. “In spite of your magnificent demonstrations, Jock, you must repair your charms by lying down.”
She followed him into his room, which opened from the sitting-room, and he turned to her, speaking from a full heart. “Oh, mother! It seems all given to me, the old home, the very post I wished for, and all this kindness, just when I thought I had taken leave of it all.” He sobbed once or twice for very joy.
“You are sure it suits you?”
“If I only can suit it equally well! Oh, I see what you mean. That is over now. I suppose the fever burnt it out of me, for it does not hurt me now to see the dear old Monk beaming on her. I am glad she came, for I can feel sure of myself now. So there’s nothing at present to come between me and my Mother Carey. Thanks, mother, I’ll just fire off my two notes; and establish myself luxuriously before Cecil comes back! I say, this is the best inn’s best room. Poor Mrs. Evelyn must have thought herself providing for Fordham. Oh yes, I shall gladly lie down when these notes are done, but this is not a chance to be neglected. Now, Deo gratias, it will be my own fault if Magnum Bonum is not worked out to the utmost; yes, much better than if we had never gone to America. Even Bobus owns that all thingshaveworked together for good!”
His mother, with another look at the face, so joyous though still so wasted and white, went back to the other room, with an equally happy though scarcely less worn countenance.
“I hope he is resting,” said Mrs. Evelyn. “Are you quite satisfied about him?”
“Fully. He may not be strong for a year or two, and must be careful not to overtask himself, but John made him see one of the greatest physicians in New York, to whom Dr. Medlicott had sent letters of introduction—as if they were needed, he said, after Jock’s work at Abville. He said, as John did, there was no lasting damage to the heart, and that the attack was the consequence of having been brought so low; but he will be as strong and healthy as ever, if he will only be careful as to exertion for a year or so. This appointment is the very thing to save him. I know his friends will look after him and keep him from doing too much. Dr. —— was quite grieved that he had no notion how ill Jock had been, or he would have come to Ashton. Any of the faculty would, he said, for one of the ‘true chivalry of 1878.’ And he was so excited about the Magnum Bonum.”
“Do you think you and he can bear to crown our great thanksgiving feast?”
“My dear, my heart is all one thanksgiving!”
“Cecil’s rejoicing is quite as much for Jock’s sake as over his boy. He told me how they had been pledged as brothers in arms, and traces all that is best in himself to those days at Engelberg.”
“Yes, that night on the mountain was the great starting-point, thanks to dear little Armine.”
“I am writing to him and to Allen,” said Barbara from a corner.
“My love a thousand times, and we will meet at home!”
“Then our joy will not feel incongruous to you?” said Mrs. Evelyn.
“No, I am too thankful for what I know of my poor Janet. She is mine now as she never was since she was a baby in my arms. I scarcely grieve, for happiness was over for her, and hers was a noble death. They have placed her name in the memorial tablet in Abville Church, to those who laid down their lives for their brethren there. I begged it might be, ‘Janet Hermann, daughter of Joseph Brownlow’—for I thank God she died worthy of her father. In all ways I can say of this journey, my children were dead and are alive again, were lost and are found.”
“Ah! I was sure it must be so, if such a girl as Miss Ashton could accept Robert.”
“I am happier about him than I ever thought to be. I do not say that his faith is like John’s or Armine’s, but he is striving back through the mists, and wishing to believe, rather than being proud of disbelieving, and Primrose knows what she is doing, and is aiding him with all her power.”
“As our Esther never could have done,” said Mrs. Evelyn, “except by her gentle innocence.”
“No. She could only have been to him a pretty white idol of his own setting up,” said Babie.
“Now,” added her mother, “Primrose is fairly on equal grounds as to force and intellect. She has been all over Europe, read and thought much, and can discuss deep matters, while the depth of her religious principle impresses him. They fought themselves into love, and then she was sorry for him, and so touched by his wretchedness and longing to take hold of the comfort his reason could not accept. I wish you could have seen her. This photograph shows you her fine head; but not the beautiful clear complexion, and the sweetness of those dark grey eyes!”
“I liked her letter,” said Babie, “and I am glad she was such a daughter to you, mother. Allen says he is thankful she is not a Japanese with black teeth.”
“He wrote very nicely to her, and so did Elfie,” said her mother. “And Armine wrote a charming little note, which pleased Primrose best of all.”
“Poor Armine has felt all most deeply,” said Babie. “Do you remember when he thought it his mission to die and do good to Bobus? Well, he was sure that, though, as he said, his own life then was too shallow and unreal for his death to have done any good, Jock was meant to produce the effect.”
“And he has—”
“Yes, but by life, not death! Armie could hardly believe it. You know he was with us at Christmas; and when he found that Bobus was to be led not by sorrow, but by this Primrose path, it was quite funny to see how surprised he was.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Evelyn, “he went about moralising on the various remedies that are applied to the needs of human nature.”
“It made into a poem at last, such a pretty one,” said Babie. “And he says he will be wiser all his life for finding things turn out so unlike all his expectations.”
“I have a strange feeling of peace about all my children,” said Caroline. “I do feel as if my dream had come true, and life, true life, had wakened them all.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Evelyn, “I think they all, in their degree, may be said to have learnt or be learning the way to true Magnum Bonum.”
“And oh! how precious it has been to me,” said the mother. “How the guarding of that secret aided me through the worst of times!”
THE END.