Had Sophia’s wishes been consulted, she would have preferred nursing her sorrows at home; but no choice had been left, and at the vicarage the fatherly kindness of Mr. Dusautoy, and the considerate let-alone system of his wife, kept her at ease and not far from cheerful, albeit neither the simplicity of the one nor the keenness of the other was calculated to draw her into unreserve: comfort was in the children.
The children clung to her as if she made their home, little Albinia preferring her even to Uncle John, as he had insisted on being called ever since Lucy had become his niece, and Maurice invoking caresses, the bestowal of which was his mother’s rare privilege. The boy was dull and listless, and though riot and mirth could be only too easily excited, his wildest shouts and most frantic gesticulations were like efforts to throw off a load at his heart. Time hung heavy on his hands, and he would lie rolling and kicking drearily on the floor, watching with some envy his little sister as she spelt her way prosperously through ‘Little Charles,’ or daintily and distinctly repeated her hymns. ‘Nothing to do’ was the burthen of his song, and with masculine perverseness he disdained every occupation suggested to him. Sophy might boast of his obedience and quiescence, but Mrs. Dusautoy pitied all parties, and wondered when he would be disposed of at school.
Permission to open letters had been left with Sophy, who with silent resignation followed the details of poor Gilbert’s rapid decay. At last came the parcel by the private hand, containing a small packet for each of the family. Sophy received a silver Maltese Cross, and little Albinia a perfumy rose-leaf bracelet. There was a Russian grape-shot for Maurice, and with it a letter.
With childish secrecy, he refused to let any one look at so much as the envelope, and ran away with it, shouting ‘It’s mine.’ Sophy was grieved that it should be treated like a toy, and fearing that, while playing at importance, he would lose or destroy it, without coming to a knowledge of the contents, she durst not betray her solicitude, lest she should give a stimulus to his wilfulness and precipitate its fate. However, when he had galloped about enough, he called imperatively, ‘Sophy;’ and she found him lying on his back on the grass, the black cat an unwilling prisoner on his chest.
‘You may read it to Smut and me,’ he said.
It bore date the day after his father’s arrival, but it had evidently been continued at many different times; and as the handwriting became more feeble, the style grew more earnest, so that, but for her hoarse, indifferent voice, Sophy could hardly have accomplished the reading.
‘My dear Maurice,
‘Many, many thanks to you and dear little Awkey for your present. I have set it up like a picture, and much do I like to look at it, and guess who chose the colours and who are the hunters. I am sure the fat man in the red coat is the admiral. It makes the place seem like home to see what tells so plainly of you and baby.
‘Kiss my little Awk for me, and thank her for wanting to send me Miss Jenny, dear little maid; I like to think of it. You will not let her quite forget me. You must show her my name if it is put up in church, like Edmund’s and all the little ones’; and you will sometimes tell her about dear old Ned on a Sunday evening when you are both very good.
‘I think you know that you and she will never again run out into the hall to pull Gibbie almost down between you. Perhaps by the time you read this, you will be the only son, with all the comfort and hope of the house resting upon you. My poor Maurice, I know what it is to be told so, and only to feel that one has no brother; but at least it cannot be to you as it was with me, when it was as if half myself were gone, and all my stronger, better, braver self.
‘My father has been reading to me the Rich Man and Lazarus. Maurice, when you read of him and the five brethren, think of me, and how I pray that I may not have left seeds of temptation for you. In the time of my loneliness, Tritton was good-natured, but I ought to have avoided him; and that to which he introduced me has been the bane of my life. Nothing gives me such anguish as to think I have made you acquainted with that set. Keep out of their way! Never go near those pigeon-shootings and donkey-races; they seem good fun, but it is disobedience to go, and the things that happen there are like the stings of venomous creatures; the poison was left to fester even when your mother seemed to have cured me. Neither now nor when you are older resort to such things or such people. Next time you meet Tritton and Shaw tell them I desired to be remembered to them; after that have nothing to do with them; touch your hat and pass on. They meant it in good nature, and thought no harm, but they were my worst enemies; they led me astray, and taught me deception as a matter of course. Oh! Maurice, never think it manly to have the smallest reserve with your parents. I would give worlds to have sooner known that truth would have been freedom and rest. Thank Heaven, your faults are not my faults. If you go wrong, it will be with a high hand, but you would wring hearts that can ill bear further grief and disappointment. Oh! that I were more worthy to pray that you may use your strength and spirit the right way; then you will be gladness to our father and mother, and when you lie down to die, you will be happier than I am.
‘I want to tell you more, but it hurts me to write long. If I could only see you—not only in my dreams. I wake, and my heart sickens with longing for a sight of my brave boy’s merry face, till I almost feel as if it would make me well; but it is a blessing past hope to have my father with me, and know him as I have never done before. Give little Albinia these beads, with my love, and be a better brother to her than I was to poor Lucy.
‘Good-by, Maurice. No one can tell what you have been to me since your mother put you into my arms, and I felt I had a brother again. God bless you and cancel all evil you may have caught from me. Papa will give you my sword. Perhaps you will wear it one day, and under my colonel. I have never been so happy as in the time it was mine. When you look at it, always say this to yourself: “Fear God, and fear nothing else.” O that I had done so!
‘Let your dear, dear mother be happy in you: it will be the only way to make her forgive me in her heart. Good-by, my own dear, brave boy.
‘Your most affectionate brother,
‘G. KENDAL.’
‘I say, Smut,’ quoth Maurice, ‘I think you and our Tabby would make two famous horses for Awkey’s little cart. I shall take you home and harness you.’
Sophy sat breathless at his indifference. ‘You mustn’t,’ she said in hasty anger; ‘Smut is not yours.’
‘Well, Jack said that our Tabby had two kittens up in the loft; I think they’ll make better ponies. I shall go and try them!’
‘Don’t plague the kittens.’
‘I’ll not plague them; I’ll only make ponies of them. Give me the letter.’
‘No, not to play with the cats. I thought you would have cared about such a letter!’
‘You have no right to keep it! It is mine; give it me!’ cried Maurice, passionately.
‘Promise to take real care of it.’
He only tore it from her, and was gone.
‘I’m a fool to expect anything from such a child,’ she thought.
At two o’clock the Vicar hurried into the bank. ‘Good morning, Mr. Goldsmith, I beg your pardon; I wanted to ask if Mr. O’More has seen little Maurice Kendal.’
‘Not since yesterday—what’s the matter?’
‘The child is not come in to dinner. He is nowhere at home or at Willow Lawn.’
‘Ha!’ cried Ulick. ‘Can he be gone to see his pony at Hobbs’s!’
‘No, it has been sent to Fairmead. Then you have no notion where the child can be? Sophy is nearly distracted. She saw him last about ten o’clock, bent on harnessing some kittens, but he’s not in the hay-loft!’
‘He may be gone to the toy-shop after the harness. Or has anyone looked in the church-tower—he was longing to go up it, and if the door were open—’
‘The very thing!’ cried the Vicar. ‘I’ll go this moment.’
‘Or there’s old Peter, the sailor,’ called Ulick; ‘if he wanted any tackle fitted, he might go to him.’
‘You had better go yourself, More,’ said Mr. Goldsmith. ‘One would not wish to keep poor Miss Kendal in suspense, though I dare say the boy is safe enough.’
Mr. Goldsmith was thanked, and Ulick hurried out, Hyder Ali leaping up in amazement at his master being loose at that time of day.
Everybody had thought the child was with somebody else till dinner-time, and the state of the vicarage was one of dire alarm and self-reproach. Sophy was seeking and calling in every possible place, and had just brought herself to own the message of remembrance in Gilbert’s letter, thinking it possible Maurice might have gone to deliver it at Robbles Leigh; and Mr. Hope had undertaken to go thither in quest of him. Ulick and Mr. Dusautoy, equally disappointed by the tower and the sailor, went again to Willow Lawn to interrogate the servants. The gardener’s boy had heard Maurice scolding and the cat squalling, and the cook had heard his step in the house. They hurried into his little room—he was not there, but the drawers had been disturbed.
‘He may be gone to Fairmead!’ cried the Vicar.
‘How?’ said Ulick. ‘Ha! Hyder, sir!’ holding up a little shoe. ‘Seek! That’s my fine doggie—they only call you a mongrel because you have all the canine virtues united. See what you can do as sleuth hound. Ha! We’ll nose him out for you in no time, Mr. Dusautoy!’
After sniffing round the drawers, the yellow tripod made an ungainly descent of the stairs, his nose down all the way, then across the hall and out at the gate; but when, after poking about, the animal set off on the turnpike-road, the Vicar demurred.
‘Stay; the poor dog only wants to get you out for a walk. He is making for the Hadminster road.’
‘And why wouldn’t he, if the child is nowhere in Bayford?
‘I can’t answer it to his mother wasting time in this way. You may do as you like. I shall go to the training-stables, where he has once been, if not on to Fairmead. I can’t see Sophy till he is found!’
‘I shall abide by my little Orangeman,’ said Ulick; and they parted.
Hyder Ali pursued his way in the March dust, while Ulick eagerly scanned for the traces of a child’s foot. Four miles did the dog go on, evidently following a scent, but Ulick’s mind misgave him as Hadminster church-tower rose before him, and the dog took the ascent to the station.
Ulick made his way in as a train stood panting before the platform. He had a glimpse of a square face and curly hair at the window of a second-class carriage.
‘Maurice, come back!’ he cried. ‘Here, guard! this little boy must come back!’
‘Go on!’ shouted Maurice. ‘I’ve got my ticket. ‘No one can stop me. I’m going to Malta!’ and he tried to get to the other side of a stout traveller, who defended his legs from him, and said, ‘Ha! Running away from school, young master! Here’s your usher.’
‘No, I’m not running away! I’m not at school! I’m Maurice Kendal! I’m going to my brother at Malta!’
‘He is the son of Mr. Kendal of Bayford,’ said Ulick to the station-master,’ his parents are from home, and there will be dreadful distress if he goes in this way. Maurice, your sister has troubles enough already.’
‘I’ve my ticket, and can’t be stopped.’
But even as he spoke, the stout traveller picked him up by the collar, and dropped him like a puppy dog into Ulick’s arms, just as the train was getting into motion; and a head protruded from every window to see the truant, who was pommelling Ulick in a violent fury, and roaring, ‘Let me go; I will go to Gilbert!’
‘Behave like a man,’ said Ulick; ‘don’t disgrace yourself in that way.’
The boy coloured, and choking with passion and disappointment, and straining against Ulick’s hold of his shoulder.
‘Indeed, sir,’ said the station-master, ‘if we had recognised the young gentleman, we would have made more inquiries, but he asked so readily for his ticket, not seeming at a loss, and we have so many young travellers, that we thought of nothing amiss. Will you have a fly, sir?’
‘I’m not going home,’ said the boy, undaunted.
‘You must submit, Maurice. You do not wish to make poor Sophy miserable.’
‘I must go to Malta,’ the boy persisted. ‘Gilbert says it would make him well to see me. I know my way; I saw it in the map, and I’ve a roll, and the end of a cold tongue, and a clean shirt, and my own sovereign, and four shillings, and a half-crown, and a half-penny in my pocket; and I’m going!’
‘But, Maurice, this gentleman will tell you that your whole sovereign would not carry you a quarter of the way to Malta.’
The station-master gave so formidable a description of the impossibilities of the route, that the hardy little fellow’s look of decision relaxed into dejection, his muscles lost their tension, and he struggled hard with his tears.
He followed Ulick to the carriage, and hid his face in a corner, while orders were given to stop at the post-office in case there were fresh letters. There was one for Miss Kendal, in Mr. Ferrars’ writing, and with black borders. Ulick felt too surely what it must be, and hardly could bear to address Maurice, who had shrunk from him with some remains of passion, but hearing suppressed sobs, he put his hand on him and said, ‘My poor little man.’
‘Get away,’ said Maurice, shaking him off. ‘Why did you come and bother?’
‘I came because it would have almost killed your sister and mother for you to be lost. If you had seen Sophy’s face, Maurice!’
‘I don’t care. Now I shall never see Gilbert again, and he did want me so!’ Maurice hid his face, and his frame shook with sobs.
‘Yes,’ said Ulick, ‘every one knew he wanted you; but if it had been possible for you to go, your mamma would have taken you. If your uncle had to take care of her how could you go alone?’
‘I’d have got there somehow,’ cried Maurice. ‘I’d have seen and heard Gilbert. He’s written me a letter to say he wants to see me, and I can’t even make that out!’
‘Has not your sister read it to you!’
‘I hate Sophy’s reading!’ cried Maurice. ‘It makes it all grumpy, like her. Take it, Ulick—you read it.’
That rich, sensitive, modulated voice brought out the meaning of the letter, though there were places where Ulick had nearly broken down; and Maurice pressed against him with the large tears in his eyes, and was some minutes without speaking.
‘He does not think of your coming; he does not expect you, dear boy,’ said Ulick. ‘It is a precious letter to have. I hope you will keep it and read it often, and heed it too.’
‘I can’t read it,’ said Maurice, ruefully. ‘If I could, I shouldn’t mind.’
‘You soon will. You see how he tells you you are to be a comfort; and if you are a good boy, you’ll quickly leave the dunce behind.’
‘I can’t,’ said Maurice. ‘Mamma said I should not do a bit of a lesson with Sophy, or I should tease her heart out. Would it come quite out?’
‘Well, I think you’ve gone hard to try to-day,’ said Ulick.
‘Mamma said my being able to read would be a comfort, and papa says he never saw such an ignorant boy! so what’s the use of minding Gilbert’s letter? It wont let me.’
‘What wont let you?’
‘Fun!’ said Maurice, with a sob.
‘He is a rogue!’ cried Ulick, vehemently; ‘but a stout heart and good will can get him under yet. Think of what your brother says of making your father and mother happy!’
‘If I could do something to please them very, very much! Oh! if I could but learn to read all at once.’
‘You can read—anybody can read!’ said Ulick, pulling a book out of his pocket. ‘There! try.’
There was some laughing over this; and then Maurice leant out of window, and grew sleepy. They had descended into the wide basin of alluvial land through which the Baye dawdled its meandering course, and were just about to cross the first bridge about two miles from Bayford, when Maurice shouted, ‘There’s Sophy!—how funny.’
It was a tall figure, in deep mourning, slowly moving along the towing-path, intently gazing into the river; but so strange was it to see Sophy so far from home, that Ulick paused a moment ere calling to the driver to stop.
As he hastily wrenched open the door, she raised up her face, and he was shocked. She looked as if she had lived years of sorrow, and even Maurice was struck with consternation.
‘Sophy! Sophy!’ he cried, hanging round her. ‘I wouldn’t have gone without telling you, if I had thought you would mind it. Speak to me, Sophy!’
She could say nothing save a hoarse ‘Where?’ as with both arms she pressed him as if she could never let him go again.
‘In the train—intending to go to Malta,’ said Ulick.
‘I didn’t know I could not; I didn’t mean to vex you, Sophy,’ continued the child. ‘I’m come home now, and I wont try again.’
‘Oh! Maurice, what would have become of you?’ She held out her hand to Ulick, the first time for months.
‘And we’ve got a letter for you, proceeded Maurice.
Ulick would fain have withheld it, but he had not the choice. She caught at it, still holding Maurice fast, and ere he could propose her opening it in the carriage while he walked home she had torn it open, and the same moment she had sunk down, seated on the path, with an arm round her brother. ‘Oh! Maurice, it is well you are here! You would not have found them—it is over!’
She had found one brother to lose the other; but the relief of Maurice’s safety had so softened the blow, that her tears gushed forth freely.
The sense of Ulick’s presence restrained her, but raising her head, she missed him, and felt lonely, desolate, deserted, almost fainting, and in a strange place.
‘Is he dead?’ said Maurice, in a solemn low voice, and she wept helplessly, while the little fellow stood sustaining her weight like a small pillar, perplexed and dismayed.
‘Are you poorly, Sophy? What shall I do?’ said he, as she almost fell back, but a stronger arm held her up.
‘Lean on me, dear Sophy,’ said Ulick, who had returned, bringing some water from a small house near at hand, and supported her and soothed her like a brother.
The mists cleared away, the sense of desertion was gone, and she rose, but could not stand without his arm, and he almost lifted her into the carriage, where her appealing eye and helpless gesture made him follow her, and take Maurice on his knee. No one spoke; Maurice nestled close to his friend; awe-struck but weighed down by weariness and excitement. The blow had in reality been given when he was forced to relinquish the hope of seeing his brother again, and the actual certainty of his death fell with less comparative force. Perhaps he did not enter into the fact enough to ask for particulars. After a short space Sophy recovered herself enough to take out the letter, and read it over with greater comprehension.
‘They were come!’ she said.
‘In time. I am glad.’
‘In time to bring him peace, my uncle says! He knew mamma. I could never have borne it if I had deprived him of her!’
‘Nor I,’ said Ulick, from his heart. ‘Did one but know the upshot of one’s idle follies!’
Sophy looked towards Maurice.
‘Asleep!’ said Ulick. ‘No wonder. He has walked four miles! He has a heart that might have been born in Ireland;’ and as he looked at the fair young face softened and sweetened by sleep, ‘What an infant it is to have even fancied such an undertaking!’
‘Poor child!’ sighed Sophy. ‘He will never be the same!’
‘Nay, grief at that age does not check the spirits for life.’
‘You have never known,’ said Sophy.
‘No; our number has never yet been broken; but for this little man, I trust that the sense of duty may be deepened, and with it his love to you all; and surely that is not what will quench the blithe temper.’
‘May it be so!’ said Sophy. ‘He may have enough of his mother in him to be happy.’
‘I must think that the recollection of so loving a brother, and his pride in him for a hero, may make the stream flow more deeply, but not more darkly.’
‘There never was a cloud between them,’ said Sophy.
‘Clouds are all past and gone now between those who can with him “take part in that thanksgiving lay,”’ answered Ulick, kindly.
‘Yes,’ said Sophy. ‘My uncle says it was peace at last! Oh! if humbleness and penitence could win it, one might be sure it would be his.’
‘True,’ said Ulick. ‘It was a beautiful thing to find the loving sweetness and kindness refined into self-devotion and patience, and growing into something brighter and purer as it came near the last. It will be a precious recollection.’
‘To those who have no self-reproach,’ sighed Sophy; and after a pause she abruptly resumed, ‘You once blamed me for being hard with him. Nothing was more true.’
‘Impossible—when could I have presumed?’
‘When? You remember. After Oxford.’
‘Oh! you should not have let what I said dwell with you. I was a very raw Irishman then, and thought it barbarity to look cold on a little indiscretion, but I have learnt to think differently,’ and he sighed. ‘The severity that leads to repentance is truer affection than is shown by making light of foolishness.’
‘If it had been affection and not wounded pride.’
‘The dross has been refined away, if there were any,’ said Ulick. ‘You will be able to love him better now than ever you did in life.’
His comprehension met her half way, and gave her more relief and soothing than anything she had experienced for months. There was that response and intercommunion of spirit for which her nature had yearned the more because of the inability to express the craving; the very turn of the dark blue eyes, and the inflexions of the voice, did not merely convey pity, but an entering into the very core of her sorrow, namely, that she had never loved her brother enough, nor forgiven him for not being his fellow-twin. Whatever he said tended to reveal to her that there had been more justice, rectitude, sisterly feeling, and wholesome training than she had given herself credit for, and, above all, that Gilbert had loved her all the time. She was induced to dwell on the exalting and touching circumstances of his last redeeming year, and her tears streamed calmly and softly, not with the harshness that had hitherto marred her grief. Neither could have believed that there had been so long and marked a separation in feeling, or that Ulick O’More had not always been one with the Kendal family. It was all too soon that the conversation ended, and Maurice wakened suddenly at the vicarage wicket. Mrs. Dusautoy herself came to meet them as the little boy was lifted out. She had never been seen on her own feet so far from the house before! But no one ever knew the terror she had suffered, when of all her three charges not one was safe but the little Albinia, whose ‘poor Maurice’ and ‘all gone’ were as trying as her alternations of merriment. The vicar, the curate, the parish clerk, the servants of the two establishments, and four policemen, were all gone different ways; and poor Mrs. Dusautoy’s day had been spent in hearing the results of their fruitless researches, or in worse presages, in which, as it now appeared, the river had played its part.
She kissed Maurice, and he did not rebel! She kissed Sophy, and could have shaken off Ulick’s hand, but he only waited to hold up Hyder Ali as the real finder, before he ran off to desire the school-bell to be rung—the signal for announcing a discovery. It was well that Maurice was too much stunned and fatigued to be sensible what a commotion he had excited, or he might have thought it good fun.
The tidings from Malta came in almost as something secondary. The case had been too hopeless for anything else to be looked for, and when Mrs. Dusautoy consigned her charge to a couch, with entreaties to her not to move, there was calm tenderness in Sophy’s voice as she told what needed to be told, and did not shrink from sympathy. She was grateful and gentle, and lay all the rest of the day, sad and physically worn out, but quietly mournful, and no longer dwelling on the painful side of past transactions, her remorse had given way to resigned acquiescence, and desolation to a sense that there was one who understood her. The sweet tones, and, above all, those two words, ‘dear Sophy,’ would come chiming back from some involuntary echo, and the turbid depths were at peace.
When Mr. Dusautoy came to her side, and held out his hand, his honest eyes brimming over, there was no repulsion in her manner of saying affectionately, ‘You have had a great deal of trouble for my naughty little brother.’ So different was her whole tone, that her kind friends thought how much better for some minds was any certainty than suspense. She bethought herself of sending to the Drurys, and showed rather gratification than her ordinary impatience at the manifold reports of the general sympathy, and of Bayford’s grief for its hero. The poison was gone from her mind.
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