The sight was pretty, but Cherry wondered whether she ought to go out and protect her little sister's peace, deciding however, that whatever harm there was must have been done already, and that accessibility was her best condition for the present; and so she sat down to begin some of the numerous letters, though their subject was most incongruous with that of her anticipations, and she wrote with divided attention, till Felix came into the room.
'Cherry,' said he, deliberately placing himself on the settee, 'Had you any notion of this?'
'Only the last day or two, very dimly. Has it come to anything?'
'That I want to ascertain. Which did you think it was?'
'The poor little star, I'm afraid.'
'Why afraid?'
'Because there must be breakers ahead, and that poor little dear need not have been molested for years to come.'
'Is she molested?'
'Look! Ah, no! you can't turn; but if you could see them on the lawn!'
'She is such a child. She might be with him as simply as with Will.'
'I'm afraid that is over. Is not the Captain dead against it?'
'No; that's the odd thing. She seems to have vanquished him on the spot by one glint of her bonnie blue een, and he has not the heart to say No; but the worst of it is, he has no power.'
'He should not have let his son loose here.'
'So he allows, and that I saw clearer than he—which I did not, for my suspicions were in another direction, and I fear not without cause, on one side at least.'
'That's the horrid part of it!'
'So persuaded was I, that I went on at cross-purposes at first, and had to ask point-blank which of my sisters he meant, but I don't think I betrayed Angela. What is to be done about her?'
'Oh! tiresome love! Why could they not let you alone a little while? I think Angela has some notion, and that it must be what has made her so very queer.'
'Perhaps! I thought it was her share in the disaster, poor girl!'
'That would not have made her almost spiteful to poor little Stella.'
'Where is she now?'
'Gone to the penny-club business as usual.'
'I hope this will be over before she comes back. I must speak to my little one, only first let me hear what you think about it. The Captain has been most straightforward with me. He explained that he never was a favourite at home, and his marriage was a case of extorted consent. His wife was never cordially treated, and he could not forget the slights she received. Neither party wanted the other, and he had got into his lonely yachting existence, when, unluckily for him, his elder brother's death has rendered him and his boy important. The widow lives with the old people, and he thinks they want Charlie to marry the daughter. They want him to spend his vacations with them, and he is always shirking.'
'I have heard him bemoan himself.'
'The worst of it is, that if the old people take offence, they are likely to leave the bulk of the property to the grand-daughter. The Captain says he hates it all, and would freely let it go; but at Charlie's age, it would not be right to let him incur such a forfeit blindly.'
'They are both too young for anything.'
'Precisely so; but the thing must be either suffered or not, and it is a mere subterfuge to call it nothing, and let him be always about here. If the child knows nothing, the boy's mouth could be stopped, at least till he has taken his degree. I came to see whether that be still possible. You think not? Well, I have some hope of her simplicity. If not, what think you of this? We tell them they are a couple of babies, and bind the fellow to keep away somewhere till he has taken his degree, when it will either have blown over, or he can judge whether to take to a profession and endanger his prospects, and there will be some test whether he really cares for the poor little dear.'
'I'm afraid there is trial for her any way!'
'The difficulty I foresee, is in keeping the Captain up to anything. If he were set against it, our part would be much easier; but he seems to have surrendered at first sight of our Fair-Star, and he is weaker, more impulsive, and undecided than I could have conceived.'
'He has been indulging his feelings all his life. I should not wonder if Charlie were the more sensible.'
'Our other baby! So! I must see how far it has gone.'
'No! I'll call her. Don't move.'
'A shocking reversal,' resigning himself, 'but I believe you had rather. I don't mind walking; it is getting up and sitting down that beats me. Don't startle the child. There's still hope that he has not stirred the waters.'
Cherry had no such hope, as she stood at the conservatory door, calling Stella. Both came up to her; and as she sent the girl to her brother, Charlie looked at her with an anxious 'Well?' as the colour deepened in his honest face.
'I think your father is in the study,' she evasively said.
'Come, now, Miss Underwood, I am sure you know all about it. What sort of a chance have I?'
'I don't think you ought to have any chance at your age. Indeed, Charlie, I do wish you had let it alone for the present.'
'I assure you, I didn't know I wasn't going to let it alone; but what could I do when I found the dear little darling crying enough to overset a mill-stone? One couldn't but do one's best to comfort her; and when I found I had really got over the line, and been making sheer love, I could not but have it out and go on with it.'
'Then was it only that moment?'
'No! no! no! I'd known her for my Star, my light, my darling, ever since I can't tell when; but of course I knew what a shindy there would be, and as long as I could come here and look at her, I could have gone on quietly till I was of age, and could fight it out. Only when it came to her being lonely—'
'Do you think she knew it for what you say?'
Charlie shrugged his shoulders, laughed, and coloured.
'And your father?'
'Thatiscomical,' he said confidentially. 'He was dead against it! hummed and hawed, called me no end of fools, said I should be cut off with a shilling, and told me how my grandmother bullied my poor mother. I'd hard work to haul him here, and he said it was only to beg the Squire's pardon, cram full of objections. Well, there was the darling girl gathering forget-me-nots in the garden, with Scamp and the doves round her. "That's she, bless her!" says I. "Is it she?" says he; and with that, he whips out of the skiff, leaving me to moor it, you see, looks her full in the face—I believe he hadn't seen a young lady to look at since my mother died—"Are you Charlie's little Stella?" says he; and behold, there he is, giving her a regular paternal kiss, before I could get quit of the boat. And when one's own father is all right, who is to make objections?'
Stella's examination had been short. Felix held out his hands, took hers, and gazing into her blushing face, said, 'Look at me, my child, and tell me if you know what Captain Audley is come for.'
She hung her flower-like head, and answered, 'I think I do.'
'And what do you think of it?'
'O Brother,' the eyes overflowed, 'I didn't know it wasthat, when he came and was so good to me, or I would not have been so unkind in all the trouble. I only thought how nice he was. Indeed it was not forgetting Tedo.'
'No, indeed, my sweet; that was the last thing I meant. Only, since you do know the meaning of it, tell me—whether you like it.'
'Like! O Brother! It did just seem to take away all the unhappiness. I couldn't help it, you know!'
'Ah! No, no, my dear, you didn't hurt me. Now will you be patient, so as not to get Charlie into trouble, and trust me?'
'Trust you, Brother?' in a tone of wonder, as if it would have been impious to do otherwise; and then she faltered, 'I thought Captain Audley didn't mind itmuch—for, Brother, he kissed me.'
'He is ready to like you with all his heart; but he has a father too, and can't do all he pleases. So you may have to be kept waiting to grow older.'
'Oh yes,' said Stella; 'I know I'm too young, and I could not go away from everybody for a long long time.'
So the edict was given in form, with more assumption of authority on Felix's part than had been his wont towards his sisters' lovers; but he saw it was the best way to spare the little maid from what might prove trifling and end in disappointment, and the young lover from unfair usage of his grandparents, and its punishment. Someone must be resolute, and the father would not; so the brother had to depict the impossibility of fostering an attachment between an undergraduate and a child, under the certainty of displeasing the head of the family.
Charlie argued that it was hard his father's consent should not suffice—that he cared not for the property—he would go to his uncle in Australia, become printer's-devil at Bexley—anything to be free to win his Cynosure, while his father seemed far more disposed to applaud him than to say, Nonsense; and it fell to Felix to explain that whatever course Charlie might decide on, it must not be till his Oxford career was ended, and that till then there must be neither engagement nor correspondence, and the vacation must be spent elsewhere, since daily meetings in present circumstances would be a wrong towards all parties concerned.
Captain Audley could not gainsay that this was both reasonable and honourable, and even reminded Charlie of an invitation from Lord Liddesdale, to pay a visit at his foreign embassy in the long vacation. Meantime there was to be nothing to bind either party; but as Charlie had to return to Oxford that night, a parting interview was allowed in the drawing-room, in which he raved a good deal, and she was very quiet and rational.
Then Felix was left to repose, which he so sorely needed as to have to give up both coming in to dinner, and driving to meet Mr. Fulmort.
'Sisters' lovers are tough customers,' he said. 'Thank you, Cherry,' as she elevated the front and lowered the back of his chair, so as to render it a couch; 'it is well for me that you would have nothing to say to the sculptor.'
She kissed him silently; and as she looked at the pallid sunken face, with the eyes closed, she recollected her declaration that he must be more to her dead than any other man alive, and though far from retracting the sentiment, she wished she had uttered nothing so ill-omened.
The effect on Angela was the present anxiety; and it was impossible not to feel it staved off by the announcement, through a school-child, that she was staying to dine and spend the rest of the day at Miss Hepburn's. Whatever this might portend, it was a present relief to Cherry, though Clement looked very gloomy upon it; and the Vicar of St Matthew's had not been many hours in the house before Cherry, rather to her own surprise, found herself invited into Clement's library, to assist at a council over the perplexing girl.
Neither brother nor sister could say more than that, up to the moment of the accident, she had been in her usual state of ultra-observance and ultra-gaiety, alike wilful and exaggerated, and that on finding herself the real delinquent in the fatal catastrophe, she had petrified into hard fierce reserve. On Sunday alone had she been at Church, and then had been absent from the Feast where all the family had met; she had thrown over all the little ecclesiastical offices that had been her pride and pleasure, and repelled all sympathy, except perhaps that of the ladies to whom she had been most opposed, and whom she had derided and contemned for years. Indeed, she might be said to have hoisted their flag, for the cross round her neck had been discarded, and her hair had descended from the stupendous fabric which no asseveration would avail to persuade the Miss Hepburns to be of native growth, and was now coiled about her head—with an effect, certainly, preferable in itself, save for the signification. Things were come to a droll pass, that the absence of Angel's lofty coiffure should be complained of by one vicar to the other; but Mr. Fulmort had been Angela's first guide, who had prepared her for Confirmation and Communion, and Clement had from the first looked to him to deal with her; but Mr. Fulmort was scarcely encouraging. 'Nothing will be gained by forcing me on her,' he said. 'If I cannot draw, driving will be of no avail.'
'If Miss Isabella has got hold of her,' said Cherry, 'she is likely to imitate the people in books whose first act of virtue is shunning their priest; and when Angel's conscience gets on the side of perverseness, there is no saying what she will not do.'
'One is so in the dark!' said Clement.
'I think I can guess the process,' said the elder clergyman. 'Only actual experience teaches that no system is infallible.'
'Of all plans of education, I should have chosen hers!' said Clement.
'So we trusted to the framework!'
'And how admirably it has answered with Robina, and many more.'
'As far as we see; but this is what I imagine this poor child's history. She has more vehemence and energy than depth, and her musical taste found ritual so congenial, that excitability passed for devotion, in spite of the lack of trustworthy fruit of submission or self-discipline.'
'I believe it did.'
'So she is in a manner justified in complaining that she was allowed to trust to the shell alone. She has been content with the outward form all this time; and when real sorrow makes her find its failure, she is naturally distrustful of the whole teaching that was to her mere surface work.'
'Nothing could be more ungrateful, or improper, than to charge it on you, Sir,' cried the younger vicar.
'Less unjust than you think, though there may be some human nature in it too. When my sister collected those girls, we thought, like most who try experiments, that we had a set of puppets, on whom certain wires must produce certain results—and if we saw untoward specimens, charged it on the want of our system.'
'The system is not ours, but Divine.'
'There was a Divine system in the Wilderness, but with how many did it succeed?'
'According to that,' said Clement, 'nothing would be anybody's fault.'
'And,' said Geraldine, 'did it not succeed with all the mighty men who overlived Joshua?'
'True; but even of that generation, who had never seen Egypt, there were many who lacked faith to drive out the Canaanites. It is the same story over and over again. People who have been led out of something like Egypt, are apt to think those secure who have never been from under the shadow of the Cloud, and have known no bread but manna. We forget how much depends on being "mixed with faith in the hearers."'
'Faith cannot be given from without,' said Clement.
'Certainly not; but looking back at our dealing with our earlier pupils, I suspect that we worked away with the peculiarities we had newly discovered, rather than with the great universal foundations. I am sure we did so with you, Underwood: though happily there was stuff enough beneath to prevent us from doing more than make you unnecessarily priggish.'
'Geraldine can testify that that was done to your hand, Sir,' said Clement, laughing. 'I believe I should have made any place I cared for odious in the ears of my family.'
'We did not know how much party spirit we infused, fancying that once in our groove all must go right. Now, I believe Angela ought to have been held back. She would have done better in a commonplace well-principled school.'
'I don't think her teachers were deceived in her,' said Cherry.
'No; but the observances which she genuinely enjoyed deceived herself. Probably at a dull bare service she would have been naughty and uninterested, but then she would have known her religion for what it was worth. I don't say that I see what ought to have been done, if we could begin over again; but I do see that she has found out her unreality in the time of distress, and concludes that the fault is in what we taught her. To use another metaphor, she thinks that because the Cross has been decked with flowers, it has been no Cross at all; but I trust she is learning the way thither.'
'By casting aside the means?' said Clement.
'Because to her they had not been means, but mirages. If I understand rightly, this is her first true awakening.'
'But is it to be a regular case of conversion?'
'I hope so. I pray so.'
'Is she to be left to these women, to learn contempt for the Sacraments and the Church?'
'Are they Churchwomen?'
'After a fashion! I don't believe they hold a single Catholic doctrine.'
'They never say the Creed—eh?'
Clement looked abashed.
'If she were likely to be led into an act of schism, it might be needful to interfere; but if they seem to be bringing her to the sense of repentance and individual spiritual contact, which is the essential need, resistance would do more harm than good.'
'Why should she not come the right way?'
'Do you remember Ezekiel's pure springs, which the evil shepherds had fouled with their feet, so that the flock could not drink thereof? Without classing you among evil shepherds, whatever I may do with myself, is it not natural to turn from what has been without benefit?'
'By her own fault. And is she to follow their ways, without check or warning?'
'They are communicants?'
'Four times a year. Frequent Celebrations seem to them superstitious and formal.'
'And irreverent,' added Cherry.
'Is it not doubtful whether our poor girl have been reverent? Should not we perhaps be keeping her back for a time?'
'Not for their reasons.'
'No; but if she be in the way to what she needs and we have failed to afford her, it seems to me that while it is within the Church, we had better abstain from distracting her attention by trying to make her do things in our own way.'
'Ourway, Sir?' said Clement, whose mind was never rapid; 'it is the right way. I cannot understand sitting still to see my sister carried off into ultra Low Church.'
'Better that than incur the risk of taking party spirit for zeal and diverting her attention from vital religion to the excitement of persecution.'
'There's nothing that would gratify her more,' said Cherry.
'It is exceedingly mortifying,' added Mr. Fulmort, 'to see one's own child going over to a rival battalion, which disesteems our ensigns and war-cries; but by your own account it is no worse—the army is all one. And for ourselves, nothing can be more wholesome. I wish it all fell on me, since the mismanagement began with me; but unluckily it comes most heavily on you, both as brother and parish-priest.'
Clement was of course disarmed and humbled. 'No doubt you are right, Sir: I will try to accept the personal vexation as my due; I did not know how much it biassed me. Shall you take no notice?'
'I shall express the interest I feel as old friend and guide, but I shall not insist on confidence.'
He could afford to bide this time, for he contrived to give a parson's week, on finding how heavily this sad Whitsuntide had told upon Clement, coming at the end of a clergyman's hardest half-year. Change could not be had, for Felix was not fit for a journey, and was still so much disabled as to be unable to put on his clothes unaided; but nothing could be better for both brothers than the presence of this friend, bringing them fresh interests from the great arena of conflict between good and evil, and giving warm sympathy and satisfaction to their efforts in their own field. One of his scholars, at least, he confessed to have far surpassed his expectations. He had never expected to see his tall, docile, self-complacent chorister all the man that the Vicar of Vale Leston Abbas had become; but on the other hand, Angela, once almost his devotee, eluded him by every means in her power, and never willingly opened her lips in his presence. When at last he succeeded in catching her, and expressing surprise that she was rushing away when the church-bell was ringing, her reply was, 'I've done with those things!'
'With prayers?'
'With heartless forms.'
'So I should hope.'
'Let me go, Mr. Fulmort; I don't want to be ungrateful, but it is all one great mistake.'
'I am afraid you have found it so.'
His tone was sad, and made her exclaim, 'You feel it too, then? Oh, come and learn as I have learnt—see as I have seen!' Some men would have laughed at this sudden reversal of the order of things; but Mr. Fulmort felt the matter far too seriously, and the sound of inquiry he emitted encouraged her to go on. 'Oh; the hollowness of my old life—the utter lack of all aid or light when the hour of darkness came—the misery, the agony, that racked me all day and all night, when all you told me to trust to proved broken reeds. Would that I could proclaim to all what it was to see at last in Whom—in what assurance lies peace!'
'Yes, my child,' he said. 'There truly lies the only hope. May you be able to grasp it firmly, and for ever, and render the fruits of faith and repentance apparent in your life.'
'I shall never put my trust in my own works again. I hate them—I loathe them.'
'You cannot do better than repent, and bring them for forgiveness.'
'To the foot of the Cross?'
'Certainly.'
'Then you really see the hollowness and emptiness of the system of thinking them pardoned by a man's voice?'
'Did I ever tell you they were?'
She was a little conscience-stricken, but rallied enough to say, 'It is the whole principle of auricular confession, to which nothing shall ever bring me back. Not the utmost persecution!' and as he smiled a little, she added, 'It was all form and human intervention.'
'If you can say so from personal experience, Angela,' he replied, 'it proves how lamentably I have failed to express my doctrine and intention, and how vain it is for me to try to converse with you. Indeed, I only attempted it because I knew you had had a great shock, and were unhappy.'
'Unhappy till I turned my back on the world and its vanities, and beheld the true and simple way of salvation! Would you but let me show it to you!'
'My dear child, do you think I have feebly tried to follow my Master all these years, and never seen it? If I have so totally failed in guiding you to it, my words alone were in fault, and it is well that the one Truth has been brought to bear upon you. I thank Him for it, and pray that some day you may be led tofulltruth.'
There he quitted her; and she could report that Mr. Fulmort had tried to get her under his direction again, and that she had almost brought him to own the emptiness of the system that he inculcated. That he did not was, Miss Martha decided, wholly owing to the Old Adam.
'TheVater Unserthat I saidBefore I went to school,The prayers come ringing in my headLike ripples in a pool.'Veritas.
Angela's conversion, as her friends did not scruple to term it, had this happy effect at least of extinguishing her passion (if so it might be called) for Charles Audley. It was swallowed up in the general excitement; and once or twice Cherry had reason to think she had persuaded herself that she had voluntarily renounced him among other earthly vanities, such as her chignon, her church decorations, and her balls.
If she still felt any jealousy of Stella, it only showed itself in a pitiful contempt of the poor little unawakened creature, so contentedly deluded by ceremonies, and drifting into the jaws of this wicked world; but it was memorable that though she always opposed Stella's opinion, were it only on the weather, she never attacked her direct, nor reproached her, probably out of a certain discomfort which the little maid's simple answers always gave her.
Stella was Clement's mainstay this summer in the thousand and one inconveniences caused him by Angela's conscience in the thousand and one parish affairs in which she used to be his prime helper, but where she now disentangled the material and the spiritual, after the example of her advisers, though with a sauciness and vexatiousness of which they were incapable. Luckily no idea of pining after Charlie seemed to occur to Stella, and she devoted the time once spent on poor little Theodore to the many tasks that Angela had left on her hands and considered just fit for such a foolish little thing.
Any secrecy as to the possible relations with Charlie had proved unachievable, at least within the family. Charlie might be banished, but his father carried on the courtship with unblushing assiduity, viewing Stella as his special property, and being never happy without seeing her two or three times in a week. In truth, after so many years of morbid seclusion, the society of a family home—such as he had never known—was so delightful to him, that he could not stay away, and almost exposed himself to suspicion of being in search more of a wife for himself than his son.
The Kittiwake, where never woman had set foot, and where Charlie, in spite of Angela's bantering solicitations, had never ventured to invite her, was urgently pressed on the whole party for any excursion imaginable; and when it became evident that both the Captain and Stella greatly wished it, the seniors consented to a day's sail along the coast, it being decided in council between Wilmet and Cherry that sea air might bring freshness back to Felix's looks.
The morning was all that could be wished, but the post brought an appointment from a man of business to see the Squire respecting some land which was to be secured in East Ewmouth, for the foundation of buildings that might serve to Christianize the straggling population there, making a fresh district from both parishes. For it was to this purpose they had decided to devote the tithes cut off from Vale Leston, since the new tenements actually stood in that parish, and the work at home was now forward enough to enable the extension to be made.
Great was the lamentation at this inopportune arrival; but Felix owned himself glad of it, and did not look equal to a long day's fatigue. Clement also remained to assist at the consultation, and after the conference, walked to the spot with the agent.
Returning soon after the hour for the second post, Clement went to the study, where, as he entered, Felix, who was seated at his writing-table, lifted up his face from his supporting hand, very pale, and with eyes swimming in tears, but with a look of rest and relief that reminded the Vicar of that which had responded to the tidings that their little Theodore was beyond the reach of harm. He held up something, saying, 'Look!'
'The photograph of my father.'
'See there,' pointing to the corner.
'T.E.U. Edgar's copy! Is he found?'
'Thank God! There is hope that the lost is found!' He rested his head against Clement, heaving a mighty irrepressible sob, physically painful, but full of relief. Those two had become inexpressibly much to one another during these four years, and far more during the last six weeks.
'From Travis?' asked Clement presently, observing the handwriting of the letter on the table.
'Yes, good faithful fellow! Would you read it to me, Clem? I cannot get on;' and he cleared his eyes of the blinding tears. 'I could only see that there was hope at the last.'
'Of finding him?'
'Not here. No. He begins by telling us the dear fellow is dead. I think it was something violent, and that he tried in vain to save him. Let me hear, that we may see whether there be anything we can spare Cherry.'
Clement thought Felix even less fit for any shock or agitation than his sister, but he could only make him lie back on his couch, whence he watched with earnest eyes for every word.
The narrative is, however, here given more fully than it could be written, especially as one portion of the history was reserved for Marilda alone.
Ferdinand Travis had inherited a considerable claim to mining property in the south-eastern portion of California. He had gone to America, intending to dispose of it, but had ended by settling down there, naming it Underwood, and doing his best to exert an influence for good on the lawless races he found around him. He had enough in common with them to obtain a partial success where another would have failed; his little township was thriving, and to some degree civilized, and he had even been able to obtain the building of a church and residence of a clergyman with a kind of mission to the Indians. All around him was safe and peaceable; but between him and the nearest cities on the Pacific lay a tract subject to the forays of a tribe in the tiger stage that precedes the abject decline of the unhappy red-skins. The district was gradually becoming settled, but neither village nor traveller was secure from horrible raids and savage massacres, and save by letter-carriers, who trusted to speed, the region was seldom traversed except by parties numerous enough to protect themselves.
Such a surveying party Ferdinand had joined, intending to transact some affairs at San Francisco; and on the third day of his journey, when descending a steep hill-side, the war-shouts of the Indians were heard, and presently about thirty beplumed and painted savages were seen evidently triumphing after a victory.
The travellers scarcely uttered a word, but settled themselves in their saddles, and drew their revolvers, then charged the foe with the full impetus of a down-hill gallop. It was the affair of a moment; the Indians threw themselves on their horses and scoured away like the wind, while the new comers found that they had been exulting over the slaughter of only two men and one little child, whom they had been proceeding to mangle after the custom of their tribe. One victim was quite dead, and already scalped and scored; the other, though senseless, stripped, and gashed in many places, was still breathing, as was the child—a boy of six or seven, though shot through the breast, and the mark of the scalping-knife already begun on his head.
The keen wiry dauntless fellow, who acted as guide, driving two of the party in a much enduring waggon, opined that they came from Fiddler's Ranch, about two miles off, and recognized the living one as the Fiddler himself—the best company, he guessed, between this and the Atlantic. It was a service of danger to lift the bodies into the vehicle, for the Indians might be hovering about in ambush to fall on the rescuers in great numbers; but the transit was safely performed; up to the stockade and ditch protecting the township called Fiddler's Ranch, whence issued a population of the rudest description, vituperating the Indians, and bewailing 'poor Tom the Fiddler and little Jerry, the smartest, cutest little critter that side of the mountains.' 'Pretty nigh gone, stranger; bring him in, lay him by the side of his father; those brutes of Injuns fix their work off too handsome—best if neither opens his eyes again.'
A low frame-house, the outer half-store, also post-office, newspaper office, photographic studio—such was the place into which the father was carried, Ferdinand following with the child into an inner room, where were some appliances of comfort, a neatly ordered bed, a few chairs, a table, and some drawings fastened to the wall—among them a photograph that arrested Ferdinand's attention. Had he not gazed at the likeness from his bed in Mr. Audley's room? did he not know it in the family parlour, and in Clement's cell at St Matthew's? It was the likeness of Edward Underwood!
He turned hastily to the bed. Yes, the face, weather-stained yet ghastly, overgrown with neglected beard, stained with blood and dust, still showed the delicate chiselling of eyebrow and nose, the Underwood characteristic!
Such remedies as the Ranch afforded produced tokens of reviving power, and Ferdinand could not believe the wounds necessarily mortal. The rest of the party were about to pursue their journey, and through them he sent the most urgent entreaties and liberal promises that could induce a surgeon to take his life in his hand, and cross that dreadful waste. The signature of F.A. Travis was well known in the West.
While Ferdinand was washing away the soil from the face once so fair and brilliant, bringing out more of the familiar features, consciousness returned in groans; and when at last the lids were raised, and showed the well remembered deep blue eyes, the first word that struggled articulately from the lips was, 'Jerry! Baby!'
'Here!' Ferdinand laid the nerveless hand on the little flaxen head, still motionless.
That was enough at first, but as the tide of life began to flow more freely, Edgar called the child again; and as no answer came, used his hand to feel, writhed his head to look. 'Jerry!—what—asleep? They've not hurt him!' The last words in a tone of full sense and anguish.
'He does not seem to suffer,' said Ferdinand. 'I have sent for a doctor, and I trust to keep you both up till he comes.'
'A doctor! Here?' with a contemptuous groan. 'Help me, I must see him!' with a vain effort for a fuller view of the child, who was on a sort of crib by his side, lying with closed eyes, and a beautiful waxen death-like face. 'Lift me!'
It cost sobs of agony, though that seemed lost in the intense gaze. 'Is his wound there?' he asked, looking at the bandaged head.
'That was the scalp-knife, but it has done little harm.Thewound is here, but the ball passed out at the back.'
'And ishere,' said Edgar, laying his hand on his body. 'I had him before me on my horse, as we always went, my brave boy! One week more, and we should have been beyond the miscreants' reach!' and he sank back with a piteous wailing moan, too weak and shattered for demonstrative grief, though utterly crushed. 'Put him by me,' he added presently; 'if there be any life left in him, he will like it.'
'I am afraid of hurting you.'
'Nothing will make much odds now. We are both done for, and I am glad it is both, if it was to be. My poor little chap, we couldn't do without each other!'
Then, as Ferdinand placed the child where his restless hand could stroke the cheek, tender parental pride revived. 'A jolly little face, isn't it? if you saw it like itself. Oh, if I could see those eyes open for once!'
There seemed a revival of strength; but with the knowledge of the bullet-wound and the six frightful gashes of the Indian knives, Ferdinand felt that a few questions must be risked, lest this should be a delusive rally, and speech suddenly fail. 'You know me, Edgar?'
'Fernan Travis! Ay. You're not much altered! But how did you know me? I'm not much like the swell I used to be! Ah! I see!' as Ferdinand signed towards the photograph. 'How aretheyall?'
'All well, when last I heard. Longing only to hear of you.'
'Better not.'
'And this is your boy. His mother?' he added, with more hesitation; and it brought a fierce look.
'Never had one in any real sense. She left him at ten months old—always hated him. But he's all right. You'll find the certificate in that old green case.'
'Of his baptism?'
'No. Such matters don't come handy here, and she wasn't one to concern herself about them. I don't know that she was the better for that! No: it's my marriage lines! I kept them for his sake, though I gnashed my teeth at them often enough.'
'Pray let me baptize him!' entreated Ferdinand, with an imploring accent, contrasting so curiously with his bronzed face and black beard, that Edgar again smiled, saying, 'You've not turned parson?'
'No, but this is a case of necessity.'
'Oh! all's one to me,' interrupted Edgar, with a sort of instinctive sneer to cut short a Clementine discourse; 'since this business must come to their ears at home, they may as well be at peace about one of us.'
'And his name?'
'His eyes—you'll never see them—but they have so much little Cherry's wistful look, that I've called him Gerald; you may tack Felix to it. No mockery! He's been the happiest little soul that ever was born, happiest maybe if he goes on as he is, knowing nothing about it.'
As Fernan repeated the Lord's Prayer, first learnt from Lance, the tears gathered and softened Edgar's eyes, and made a mist as he saw the pale brow sprinkled, and heard the Holy Name.
'You said that once for him. Let me hear the old echo again. I wanted to teach him, but it never came right.'
Ferdinand was so thankful that the doxology came from his heart, though at the moment he saw that the poor child had been almost baptized in blood, for Edgar's caresses had displaced the bandage and some bright red drops had started, and mingled with the water, and he could not help silently tracing the cross with his finger before kissing and wiping it away, and re-adjusting the handkerchief. 'He is warmer,' he said. 'See, his lips are less deathly.'
'The death flush,' said the father.
'It need not be. I will try the brandy again. I thought we got a little down before.'
'I tell you he shall not be tortured! Why should he wake to an hour's conscious misery? I could not bear it! I say I will not have it done!' and he stretched out his hand as in protection.
'Nay, why should not he live? There can hardly be any vital part here, and it has just missed the spine. Let me try!'
'To make him a wretched orphan. Another burthen to Felix.'
'That need not be a scruple now.'
'He has not married Marilda after all!'
'No; but he has come into the property.'
He was surprised at the effect of his words, 'What! what! Felix! Vale Leston?'
'Yes, he has been living there these four years.'
'Not married?'
'No.'
'Then that child is heir to all! Bless me! Felix at Vale Leston! It makes one believe in a Providence at last.'
He anxiously watched Ferdinand's endeavours to restore his little son, as though divided between the wish for his life and the apprehension of his visible suffering; but though the stimulant was certainly swallowed, and produced a slight revival of pulse, the lethargy continued.
Edgar's own wounds, except the rifle-shot in the body, were the lacerations with which the Indians mark their victims, not mortal in themselves; but he never admitted any hope for himself, and though for one day and night his recovery seemed possible, after that the wounds assumed an appearance which the experienced inhabitants, many of them fugitive Secessionists, pronounced to be fatal.
He talked a good deal at times, and was eager to hear all Fernan could tell him about home; and though he gave no connected history, it was possible to piece together the sad story of his life from his rambling talk.
The sight of Spooner, the manager, in a cab, had convinced him that his forgery had been detected, and he could hardly credit the assurance that it was known to no creature save Marilda and Ferdinand himself, whom she had instantly despatched to assure him of pardon and secresy.
'No! did Polly do that? A golden girl I knew she was; but that's sublime! Yet I might have known she had held her tongue, since Felix and Cherry are alive and well! Good old girl. I say, Travis, you must have her after all. She deserves it!'
His relief was intense, when he thought of his son, in finding no brand affixed to the name he had never dared own again, except at the two most unhappy events of his life, his duel and his wedding.
'Ourselves, our souls, and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice,' he said. 'Those were little Lance's words—the chief reason he assigned for burying himself at Bexley. A fanatic craze of course, but I never got the words out of my head, and I'm sure I've been the sacrifice, soul and body, though not what you'd call a holy or a reasonable one! Well, whatever hindered him, it was well for him!'
He explained that Allen had been a feeble speculator, but plausible, of personal good faith, and perniciously sanguine. His schemes had chiefly devoured Thomas Underwood's legacy, while as to the other debts, Edgar treated them lightly, and though he was much moved at Geraldine's exertions to pay them, he called it an infatuation in Felix to have allowed it.
After his flight to Ostend, Edgar had joined Allen's company at Strasburg. Failure had disgusted him with painting, and the free wandering life had long fascinated him, while with the Zoraya he had a standing game at coquetry. Though her name was Hungarian, she was almost stage-born, and her nationality was harder to analyze than Ferdinand's. She had sung ever since she could speak, and been bred to the boards, but as, in spite of her splendid beauty, she lacked dramatic talent, and her voice had been too early strained, she was never more than a third-rate prima-donna, with airs and graces that were Edgar's sport and titillation, while to her he was the handsomest and most gentlemanly man in the company, with wit and breeding of which she was half afraid.
When Edgar found that the unhappy occurrence at Pau was known, he asked eagerly after Alice, blessing the kindness that had brought her home; but he lived where life was held too cheap to make him greatly heed blood-guiltiness; nor had he deemed the wound more than the just penalty of forcing the duel on him, viewing the fatal result chiefly as an accident. But Zoraya had seen Alice shriek and faint, and Edgar falter and blush, and knew that this pretty English doll had been the cause of his killing his man. Thenceforth passion and jealousy awoke in her, and made her whole being centre in the determination to turn his trifling into earnest. Her beauty became more striking, her songs more effective in the absorption of her soul, and her eager pursuit became as often oppressive as amusing. When he had remained in Egypt with the apparently dying Major Harewood, nothing could persuade her that the Englishman was not connected with Alice; and when he joined the troop again, she hailed him like a truant slave returned to his bondage.
Why had he not broken from it? Had the telegram announced Felix, he could not have helped lingering for a sight of his face in spite of everything; but Wilmet, in her cold severity, and her grief too, he could not encounter, especially as Zoraya had threatened to descend upon him and 'imagine the meeting.'
So he drifted back to the 'company,' which had by force of custom become a sort of home, and was his sole resource. 'Rattle-snake and frog,' he said; 'of course the frog succumbs at last.'
But that had not been till the retirement of the Allens had left him to the mercy of the Prebels, and when the absence of Mrs. Allen's unimpeachable respectability left the company at the mercy of scandal; and a little exaggeration of evil report, with a few tears and heroics, brought him passively to surrender his hand to his pursuer, and they were married in New Zealand before proceeding to America to 'star it' in the Southern States.
Even then his affectionate nature would have opened to family love; but with the attainment of her object, Zoraya's passion ceased, and she viewed him as a master to be resisted. His ideal of a wife had been formed on very different women, and incensed her imperious temper; and when her violence was met by cool sarcasm, she was lashed to frenzy. Her repugnance to motherhood completed his disgust. He deliberately told Fernan that first and last he had never seen a spark of even animal yearning towards the infant, only angry impatience of the discomfort and inconvenience, and contempt of the pleasure it gave him. She was enough among the advocates of advanced women's rights to learn to admire her own scorn of maternity, and but for an old negress, whom he had hired on the poor little thing's unwelcome entrance into the world, its chances of life would have been few.
So they had rubbed on, till at Chicago Edgar had fallen ill with inflammation on the chest and throat, and was left voiceless, hovering on the verge of decline. He was still confined to his room when he received a note from Zoraya to inform him that she could not be burthened with the support of an invalid, and had therefore made other arrangements, in pursuance of which she enclosed a deed of divorce. To him it was liberty, and satisfaction that she had not heart enough to rob him of his child, but it was also destitution. However, there was compassion enough for the sick and deserted vocalist to render landlord and doctor merciful, and he was allowed to liquidate his debt by taking portraits as soon as he could reach the drawing-room of the boarding-house and wield his crayons.
'I don't know whether the divorce would hold water at home,' he said; 'but keep it, to guard the boy. If he is heir to anything she will scent it, like a vulture, carrion. Stay, while I can sign it, you draw up a form, giving the custody of him to my brothers, and forbidding her having anything to do with him.'
He was uneasy till this was done. His success at Chicago had given him hopes of gaining a livelihood with his brush, but he soon found photography too strong for him, and could meet with no employment as a violinist. His health was too much shattered for settled exertion, and though he said little of his struggles and sufferings, they must have been frightful, as he dropped from one failure to another, striving as he had never striven before, till he actually became a teamster to a party prospecting far West. 'I can't think how they came to take such a screw!' he said; 'but I believe they forgave me my child for the sake of my fiddle. Such a child as it was too, not eighteen months old, but never fretting for a moment. Most of the way I carried him strapped on my back, and always felt his little hand in my beard, and heard his voice in my ear as blithe as a katydid, and he was always ready to play, till he was a regular pet-kitten among them. Ah, well, Jerry, you and I have had good times together. How will he ever stand the high polite at home? Pah! You must have him out now and then, and let him breathe the prairies, and gallop after the buffaloes.'
It had ended in Edgar's settling down on this spot, having found the Editor of the 'Soaring Eagle of the Far West' closing with a favourable offer at the other end of the Continent. 'Tell Felix I took to his trade,' he said. 'Take home a sheet or two to be preserved alongside of the Pursuivant in the family archives. It is dated Violinia, a free translation of Fiddler's Ranch. Before I came, it used to be Broken-head Ranch; but it got the other name when I took to playing to hinder my boy from hearing more foul tongues than I could help. Take Lance my violin. He may some day make it over to Jerry, if he has a turn that way, though maybe he had best not.'
Perhaps nothing he said was sadder than this, considering what music could have been to him.
It appeared that though the wonderful spring of health in that salubrious air had made his first years there enjoyable, he had begun to feel the lack of all good influences as his child grew older. What he heard with indifference from his comrades, was shocking when echoed from the tender lips that brought back the thought of home; and when Gerald began to ask those deep questions of why and wherefore, life and death, that we only cease to wonder over as we grow used to them, Edgar, who had never reflected before, only undergone a few intellectual impressions and influences, answered as one bewildered; and when the fair head nestled to him, longed to see it bent over the clasped hands, like the heads so like it at home. He tried to teach; but prayers, cast off half a life-time ago, came not at his beck, and the very framework of the religion he had never attended to, and then thrown aside, had almost passed from him. Fragments floated before him, and his perplexity became longing to clear his mind; and when the foul habits and language of the Ranch came prominently before the child's growing perception, he had resolved to remove to where order and decency prevailed. He had answered an advertisement offering employment as an editor in a more advanced settlement, and was in the act of riding to an isolated station to collect his debts before his departure, when the attack had been made.
It was as if he had been just turning back from the husks which the swine did eat, and making his first step from the far country; and perhaps he thought so himself, for when Fernan's kindness as well as his own suffering had demolished his proud irony, he said, 'A fellow like you carries his Bible as a charm. Read me the old story of the younger son. It is not an original idea to ask for it, but the cadences have rung in my head ever since that "Pater noster" of yours.'
It was as if the old irreverence must still tinge whatever he said. Very perplexing it was. Was it repentance, that self-condemnation for wasted kindness? Was it faith, that increasing craving for Gospel messages? Was it prayer, the entreaty for the forms whose words, all broken, haunted the memory of the clergyman's son? He showed neither fear nor regret; he knew he had his death-warrant, he had made a bad business of life, and was weary of it—he, his thirty-second year not yet complete—he, the most gifted of the brothers. He sent no direct message, either to ask pardon for himself, or protection for his child—perhaps he was too secure of both to feel the need, for he spoke more and more of Felix and Cherry—nay, seemed to be talking to them when fever obscured his mind. Over and over recurred Lance's answer, 'a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice,' as if it had been the riddle of his life—or again the opening words of the Lord's Prayer, running into 'I will arise and go to my Father.'
The loving hearts must trust to the Father, Who can meet the son even while yet a great way off. And it was well for them that kind Ferdinand dropped the veil over the day when the doctor came too late for alleviation, though in time to save the child, as the lethargic trance gave way, and the moan of 'Daddy, daddy!' began. The last conscious light of the father's eyes met those of the boy; his last word replied to the feeble call. So Edgar Underwood passed away, and Ferdinand buried him beneath a pine-tree, amid many evidences that he had endeared himself to the rude spirits around, who mourned him in their rough sort, with many an anecdote of his ready wit and good-nature, and many another of little Jerry's drollery, simplicity, or courage.
The doctor recommended transporting the child to Sacramento before recovery of his senses should aggravate the danger of the journey. The spine, though not actually touched, had received a shock, and would require most careful treatment, beyond his own skill. So a bark cradle like that of a papoose, had been constructed, and slung to Ferdinand's shoulders so that he could raise it in his arms and break the jolting of the waggon over the roadless waste. When clasped in a pair of kind arms, with a beard to put his hand into, and a soothing voice to hush his moan, he did not waken to miss his father, though more than once he asked how soon they should arrive, and many times begged to go to bed.
The best surgeons of Sacramento and San Francisco had consulted over the little fellow, and pronounced that the spine had escaped by so little that the nerves would long feel the shock, though it might be outgrown in time. They thought he might be removed as soon as the external wounds were healed and the constitution had somewhat rallied. A nurse had been obtained, but at present the boy would endure no attendance but Ferdinand's, and seemed satisfied and lulled into a half-conscious doze by his English voice and accent.
All that Edgar had said about his son being Felix's next heir was omitted in the letter; but Ferdinand said he supposed that Felix would wish the boy to be brought home as soon as he could safely travel, but if not, he should be sure of a loving home at 'Underwood.' If he were not to be received, a telegram should be sent to Sacramento, but there would probably be time for a letter, since weeks might pass before a move would be prudent. Of course, too, all respecting the forgery was suppressed, and only written to Marilda, who was attending her mother on her yearly visit to Spa.
Clement read the letter through without pause or remark, though his voice shook and thickened when he read of Edgar feeling about for the Lord's Prayer, and Fernan helping him. Truly, the last had been first, and the first last. He was disappointed too, not to find more to justify the hope that his brother had evidently gathered.
Felix lay back all the time, his eyes fixed with a kind of unseeing steadiness on his own photograph of his father, hanging against the wall. His hands were clasped over his breast, sometimes trembling slightly, but never unlocking. 'Thank you,' he said; 'there seems nothing to keep from Cherry.'
'She might imagine much worse things if she did not see the letter.'
'If we prepare her, and give it to her to read, it will be almost a comfort. Call her in when they come home. No, I will, or she will take alarm for me.'
Care for Cherry seemed his first thought; and Clement said, 'It is well we never told her what we thought about the Australian report. How much it has spared her!'
'Ay; mark the time, Clem! It was spring, five years ago, just when you and I began those prayers, that he was left with a little child to lead him. How often that is brought about!'
'I am glad he named the child after Cherry,' said Clement, willing to blink the full reply, for never having been able to love Edgar as did his elder brother, he could not as entirely 'believe all things and hope all things.' He felt the terrible deficiency, knowing that Ferdinand would have put foremost whatever truth would allow him to say.
The indirect reply made Felix shrink from that heart's core of the subject, unwilling to hear the faint qualified hope that conscience would suffer his brother to utter, dashing the comfort that he had embraced.
With a heavy sigh he began to lament the great unhappiness that had come upon one so formed for light and sunshine. Edgar and Lance had always been of the same temperament and tastes, and yet they had been the two arrows, shot by the same hand, but of such different course.
'A very sinister blast came on one!' said Clement.
'Yet, change their places,' said Felix. 'Lance would at fifteen have stood the foreign college, and I doubt if the Minsterham choir would have been good for Edgar!'
'The real key lies in those words that haunted poor Edgar. The sacrifice must be to One or to the other—the Rood, or the heavier weight,' said Clement.
'Heavy indeed!' sighed Felix, as if the severity cut him, giving way to a sobbing groan. 'Such a life, and such a death! Our father's pride—the flower of us all! O Edgar, our nursery king, that it should have come to this! What would not I give to have been where Travis was, if only to cry, Alas! my brother!'
And as the beautiful features, gallant bearing, and winning speech, so affectionate when most blameworthy, came over him, his enfeebled state broke down his ordinary reserve, and sorrow had its course.
Then came a long stillness while Clement wrote to Lance; but when the bell rang, Felix rose to accompany his brother; and when Clement, perceiving how painfully he moved, would have dissuaded him, he made his usual answer, that 'After a time, there is no use in favouring a strain.'
His management of himself was right, for after the quiet little service, almost a duet between the brothers, in which both could afford to falter or choke when theDe Profundiscame among the Psalms, Clement found him standing under the willow-tree, quite himself again, as he looked at Theodore's little green bed, with Stella's wreath of white roses. No doubt his thoughts were on the lone unhallowed grave parted from them by half the world; but he would not risk his self-control again, and took Clement's arm without speaking.
The twilight of the July evening was falling when the waggonette came to the door with rippling laughter and merry voices, calling to the two brothers who stood in the porch.
Clement went forward and lifted Cherry out, then left her to Felix. It was too dark to see faces; but silence was already taking effect, and when she found herself beckoned into the study, she knew her brother was strongly moved, and was too sure of the cause by intuition to utter her former cry, 'Is it Edgar?' only she trembled as Felix made her sit down on the sofa, and placing himself beside her, said, 'My Cherry, our long waiting is over;' and then while her fingers closed on the hand that held them, he calmly told her the facts.
She bore it better than he had expected, unknowing how he himself absorbed her chief anxiety. Indeed, the hours which had intervened had brought him to so resigned and thankful a tone, that it almost hid from her the full force of his tidings. She asked for the letter, and then rose in search of light.
'You would like to go to your room,' he said, and gave her his arm, both too much absorbed to remember that he had not helped her upstairs since the accident. When he had kissed her, and shut her into her room, he leant for some seconds on the rail, and his face was contracted by suffering, more physical than mental.
He was at the evening meal, and so was Cherry. She would not have her supper sent up, she wanted to be in his presence, and be supported by it. She was so far stunned, that the horrors that would yet haunt her for many a night had not dawned on her imagination; but when he said, 'It is well,' she felt it so, but she needed to look at his face to be soothed and comforted—yes, though it was terribly pale. The colour, save in chance flushes, had never come back, and to-night the whiteness was like marble, but the quiet strength and peace seemed to hush, bear her up, and quell the wailings of her heart.
And when John Harewood came full of anxious inquiry, he really thought the tidings had overcome them less than his own wife, who had never quite recovered the effect of her exertions at the accident, and coming home over-tired, had been quite crushed by the intelligence—the more because, like those whose judgment was stronger than their yearning over Edgar, she did not trust much to those few tokens of penitence. And Angela was not withheld from loudly blaming Fernan for not having, as she assumed, insisted on proclaiming the sinner's Hope, and when assured, that no doubt he must have done so, though he did not set down his own words, she shook her head, and said, 'How could he, when he did not know it himself?' There she was silenced by Felix, and went to the Hepburns for sympathy.
For the rest, the family spoke little of the new loss. Felix quietly busied himself in the arrangements that the discovery of of his new heir made him think desirable. Mrs. Fulbert's remarriage, and the lapse of her annuity, made him better able to carry out his plans at once; and if his heir were not Clement, it was necessary to make the arrangements more definitively.
Of course the little Gerald was telegraphed and written for. He must be welcomed and loved, but he was on the whole dreaded as much as hoped for. The Mays spoke of the self-reliance of the best-trained colonial children; and what could this poor boy be—the deserted son of the singing-woman—but at best a sort of 'Luck of Roaring Camp.' Wilmet infinitely pitied Geraldine, and rejoiced that the river lay between, to keep Kester and Edward out of the way of corruption.
'He smiled, "Shall I complain if joy go byWith summer days and winter follow it?If He who gave the gladness I have known,Shall take it from me, shall I make my moan?Nay, for it all is His, the joy, the pain,The weeping and the mirth, the buoyant breathOf happy toil; the mist on weary brain;The turmoil of our life, the hush of death:And neither life nor death—things near nor far,Shall sever us from Him whose own we are."'Autumn.
The Vale Leston waggonette was waiting at the Ewmouth Station to meet the express on an August afternoon, and in it sat Geraldine, her heart in her eager eyes.
Felix was coming out of the station with—oh! what a robust, brown, bronzed Ferdinand, and between them, a little fragile, shrinking figure, dragging his feet with a certain stiffness and effort. That was all she saw till he was lifted in Fernan's arms to her kiss, and passively endured it.
'Will you come by me, Travis?' asked Felix, ascending to the driving seat.
'Will you stay with your aunt, Gerald?'
'Oh, come! don't leave me!' in a plaintive voice, were the first words Cherry heard from her nephew.
'I believe I had better. He feels the jar less,' said Ferdinand, seating himself within, and lifting the child on his knee. 'Geraldine, I say,'—bending forward and indicating Felix—'is he all right?'
'O yes! quite! he only feels the strain a little now and then,' she asseverated.
'I did not know him till he spoke,' said Ferdinand. 'He is grown so much stouter and so pale.'
'We are all getting middle aged, you know,' faintly laughed Cherry.
'Not you, Geraldine, I never saw you looking so well.'
'That's the place. It has done us all good—only strains are endless worries, and he can't take as much exercise as usual. He has thought so much of your coming too—he will be much better now it is over. Little Gerald! little Gerald, our dear little boy!' said she, trying to take the small thin hand that lay on the little black knee, and to look beneath the broad grass hat.
'Take off your hat, my man,' said Ferdinand; 'let your aunt see your face.'
The child obeyed, and sat leaning against his friend, holding his hat in both hands, and gazing full at Geraldine, out of a pair of eyes, which, after what she had heard, rather disappointed her by not being of the family blue, but soft liquid brown; but the skin was delicately fair, and the features of the true Underwood cast, strangely startling her by recalling Theodore, not the mindless Tedo of daily life, but such as he had lain in the Oratory only with those great mournful eyes and a soul intensely looking out of them. The hair too was very light, of the same silkworm fineness as Theodore's, and falling in the selfsame masses of glossy waves. Ferdinand parted these aside caressingly, and showed a curved red scar that made her shudder and ask 'Is it well?'
'Quite. It did not go deep, and even the other is entirely healed now,' said Ferdinand, 'though its effects are more lasting. However, he found his legs on board ship.'
'Are you tired, my dear?' she asked, feeling as if another moment of the gaze of the big sad eyes would make her cry.
'I'm used up,' he said, piteously, but though the phrase was Yankee, the weary tone was English, and gentlemanlike.
'Poor dear little man! We shall be at home presently, and then you shall rest, and have tea.'
A smile broke out on the little face—a smile approving him truly as Edgar's son, as, glancing up through those long black eye-lashes, he asked, 'Are you Chérie?'—(not Cherry, but Edgar's own exclusive title for her).
'Chérie! To be sure I am, my own dear, dear little boy,' and the tears started while she smiled.
'Then will you tell me the rest of the stories?'
'What stories?'
'The story about the poor man that had the burthen and went the long journey, between the lions and up the hill Difficulty. When Daddy couldn't remember, he says you know it all.'
She withstood the impulse to call out to Felix, knowing that a turn to look back always hurt him, and only said, 'Yes, my dear, I'll tell you all my stories. What a traveller you are! how did you like the sea?'
'All but the womanfolk,' said the boy gravely.
'Oh! Gerald!'
'You're not womanfolk,' he answered.
'Eh! what then?' she asked, endeavouring to look into the brown eyes, but their black fringes were down now, and he nestled to his protector, into whose ear he whispered what was repeated to her in a sort of aside:
'She's just Daddy's Chérie, the darling.'
How well she knew them for Edgar's words! She longed to have him in her arms, but she saw by the manner in which Fernan held him that the strong support was needed to break the vibration of the carriage. 'Did you carry him so all across America?' she asked.
'Nearly. Even Pulleman's cars shook him, and he could bear it less then than now. The voyage did him a world of good, and every one was kind to him, but he's as bad a misogynist as ever Lance's Miles. There were but five women at Fiddler's Ranch, and only one white, and they called them all aunts. You'll have to drop that distinction! And may I keep him in my room till he has had time to get used to the strange house?'
'And the strange beings,' said Cherry. 'It will be a great blow to Sibby, who had begun to cheer up at thought of him; but as she never had Theodore at night, she may bear it better.'
'Ah! that loss must have been much felt, though no one could wish it otherwise.'
'No one has felt it so much as he,' said Cherry, glancing up to her brother. 'He had really the mother's love for the weakest. I wonder if he will see the likeness I do! I feel as if Tedo were come back, with what was lacking.'
'And Stella?'
'Oh! Stella—' she suppressed with difficulty, 'has another interest,' and changed to—'Stella has turned into a woman, and is the most helpful person about the house.'
'Whom shall I find at home?'
'The regular domestic establishment, including Bernard, but Lance comes on Saturday, and Robin—she has not been at home since September, but the De la Poers have all settled down at the baths at Töplitz, and his Lordship is coming back on business, and escorts her to London, where Lance meets her. You'll find Will Harewood too—good fellow, I know he thought Clement overtasked, so he has taken no pupils this year, except that he is coaching Bernard for Keble College, and says he is come to learn parish work, and you would never believe what an excellent clergyman old Bill makes.'
Here they reached that spot where ten years previously the charms of Vale Leston had first broken on Felix, and this time he could not help looking back to call out 'Look, Fernan! Hold Gerald up to see the place.'
Ferdinand lifted the boy to look over the empty side of the driving seat, exclaiming himself 'How lovely! There's nothing like an English village!'
'It's a ranch and not a city,' said the boy.
'It is home, Gerald, your home,' said Felix, trying to get a view of his face, which expressed more wonder than admiration.
He looked puzzled as they drove over the bridge, and when they came among the grass and trees of the park where John Harewood's fine short-horns were grazing, he asked 'Where's the store?'
'He has only heard of Bexley!' cried Cherry. 'Not here, my dear; uncle Lance takes care of that.'
'And the paper?' asked Gerald, much to her amusement, but just then they drew up at the door, where all the rest were assembled to meet them, including Wilmet and her boys, who were both dancing about, shouting at the top of their voices for a drive round to the stables. It was too much for the new-comer, he clung to Fernan with a scream, burying his face in his breast, and trembling all over, and Fernan, saying he was always frightened at any sudden outcry, asked leave to lay him at once on his bed, and let him sleep before there were any more introductions.
Felix showed the spare room, and after an interval Ferdinand rejoined them, saying the little fellow was asleep. Cherry asked if she should sit by him.
'No, thank you, he does not mind being alone, and as long as he sees my portmanteau he will know it is all right. It is numbers and noise that frighten him, I sometimes think he has never got the Indian war-whoop out of his ears. They talked of his bravery at the ranch, but that is all gone now.'
'From helplessness, very possibly,' said Felix.
'That is fast improving, but his nerves have had a shock that does not pass off. Besides, I find the poor little fellow somehow fancied he should meet his father here. I had no notion till now that he supposed he was going back to Fiddler's Ranch and the old life when he heard ofhome.'
'It must have been all like a long horrible dream,' said Cherry.
'I don't understand it,' said Ferdinand; 'he was scarcely sensible when I took him away, and he called me Daddy till his mind grew clearer. He seems always watching for some one. I did explain it all, and then I thought he understood, and he knows what death means, but somehow he does not realize it with regard to his father.'