Fated to Be Free Part 7

Then, being of an ardently affectionate nature, and having now no one to restrain it, he began to study his children with more anxious care, and consider their well-being with all his might.

The children of middle-aged people seem occasionally to come into the world ready tamed. With a certain old-fashioned primness, they step sedately through the paths of childhood. So good, so easy to manage, so--uninteresting?

The children of the very young have sometimes an extra allowance of their father's youth in their blood. At any rate the little Mortimers had.

Their joy was ecstatic, their play was fervent, and as hard as any work.

They seemed month by month to be crowding up to their father, in point of stature, and when he and they all went about the garden together, some would be treading on his heels, the select two who had hold of his arms would be shouting in his ears, and the others, dancing in front, were generally treading on his toes, in their desire to get as near as possible and inform him of all the wonderful things that were taking place in this new and remarkable world.

Into this family the lonely little heir of the Melcombes was shortly invited to come for awhile, but for some trivial reason his mother declined the invitation, at the same time expressing her hope that Mr.

Mortimer would kindly renew it some other time.

It was not convenient to John Mortimer to invite the boy again for a long time--so long that his mother bitterly repented not having accepted the first invitation. She had an aunt living at Dartmouth, and whenever her boy was invited by John Mortimer, she meant to bring him herself, giving out that she was on her way to visit that relative.

Who knew what might happen?

Mr. John Mortimer was a fine man, tall, broad-shouldered, and substantial-looking, though not at all stout. His perfect health and teeth as white as milk made him look even younger than he was. His countenance, without being decidedly handsome, was fine and very agreeable. His hair was light, of the Saxon hue, and his complexion was fair.

Thus he had many advantages; but Mrs. Peter Melcombe felt that as the mother of a child so richly endowed, and as the possessor of eight hundred a year in order that he might be suitably brought up, she was a desirable match also. She did not mean the boy to cost her much for several years to come, and till he came of age (if he lived) she had that handsome old house to live in. Old Augustus Mortimer, on the other hand, was very rich, she knew; he was a banker and his only son was his partner. Sure to inherit his banking business and probably heir to his land.

Mrs. Peter Melcombe had some handsome and becoming raiment made, and waited with impatience; for in addition to Mr. John Mortimer's worldly advantages she found him attractive.

So did some other people. John Mortimer's troubles on that head began very soon after the sending of his first invitation to Mrs. Melcombe, when the excellent elderly lady who taught the little Mortimers (and in a great measure kept his house) let him know that she could no longer do justice to them. They got on so fast, they had such spirits, they were so active and so big, that she felt she could not cope with them.

Moreover, the three eldest were exceptionally clever, and the noise made by the whole tribe fatigued her.

John sent his eldest boy to school, promised her masters to help her, and an a.s.sistant governess, but she would not stay, and with her went for a time much of the comfort of that house.

Mr. Mortimer easily got another governess--a very pretty young lady who did not, after a little while, take much interest in the children, but certainly did take an interest in him. She was always contriving to meet him--in the hall, on the stairs, in the garden. Then she looked at him at church, and put him so out of countenance and enraged him, and made him feel so ridiculous, that one day he took himself off to the Continent, and kept away till she was gone.

Having managed that business, he got another governess, and she let him alone, and the children too, for they completely got the better of her; used to make her romp with them, and sometimes went so far as to lock her into the schoolroom. It was not till this lady had taken her leave and another had been found that Mr. John Mortimer repeated his invitation to little Peter Melcombe. His mother brought him, and according to the programme she had laid down, got herself invited to stay a few days.

She had no trouble about it. Mr. John Mortimer no sooner saw Mrs.

Melcombe than he expressed a hospitable, almost a fervent hope, that she could stay a week with him.

Of course Mrs. Melcombe accepted the invitation, and he was very sociable and pleasant; but she thought the governess (a very grand lady indeed) took upon herself more than beseemed her, and smiled at her very scornfully when she ventured to say sweet things to John Mortimer on her own great love for children, and on the charms of his children in particular.

Peter was excessively happy. His mother's happiness in the visit was soon over. She shortly found out that an elderly Scotch lady, one Miss Christie Grant, an aunt of the late Mrs. Daniel Mortimer, was to come in a few days and pay a long visit, and she shrewdly suspected that the attractive widower being afraid to remain alone in his own house, made arrangements to have female visitors to protect him, and hence the invitation to her. But she had to leave Peter at the end of the week, and which of the two ladies when they parted hated the other most it might be difficult to determine.

It cannot be said with truth that Peter regretted his mother's departure. The quant.i.ty of mischief he was taught (of a not very heinous description) by two sweet little imps of boys younger than himself, kept him in a constant state of joyous excitement. His grandmother having now been dead a year and a quarter, his mourning had been discarded, and his mother had been very impressive in her cautions to him not to spoil his new clothes, but before he had been staying with his young friends a fortnight he was much damaged in his outer man, as indeed he was also in his youthful heart, for the smallest of all the Mortimers--a lovely little child about three years old--took entire possession of it; and when he was not up a tree with the boys in a daring hunt after bergamy pears, or wading barefoot in a shallow stream at the bottom of the garden catching water-beetles, caddis-worms, and other small cattle for a freshwater aquarium, he was generally carrying this child about the garden pickaback, or otherwise obeying her little behests, and a.s.suring her of his unalterable love.

Poor little Peter! After staying fully six weeks with the Mortimers his time came to be taken home again, and his mother, who spent two days with them on her way northwards, bore him off to the railway, accompanied by the host and most of his children. Then he suddenly began to feel the full meaning of the misfortune that had fallen on him, and he burst into wailings and tears. His tiny love had promised to marry him when she was grown up; his two little friends had given him some sticklebacks, packed in wet moss; they were now in his pockets, as were also some water-beetles in a paper bag; the crown of his cap was full of silkworms carefully wrapped in mulberry leaves; but all these treasures could not avail to comfort him for loss of the sweet companionship he had enjoyed--for the apples he had crunched in the big dog's kennel when hiding with another little imp from the nurse--for the common possession they had enjoyed of some young rats dug out of the bank of the stream, and more than all, for the tender confidences there had been between them as to the endless pranks they spent their lives in, and all the mischief they had done or that they aspired to do.

John Mortimer having a keen sympathy with childhood, felt rue at heart for the poor little blinking, sobbing fellow; but to invite him again might be to have his mother also, so he let him go, handing in from his third daughter's arms to the young heir a wretched little blind puppy and a small bottle of milk to feed it with on the way.

If anything could comfort a boy, this precious article could. So the Mortimer boys thought. So in fact it proved. As the train moved off they heard the sobs of Peter and the yelping of the puppy, but before they reached their happy home he had begun to nurse the little beast in his arms, and derive consolation from watching its movements and keeping it warm.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SHADOW OF A SHADE.

"The world would lose its finest joys Without its little girls and boys; Their careless glee and simple ruth, And innocence and trust and truth; Ah! what would your poor poet do Without such little folk as you?"

Locker.

"Well, anyhow," observed Mr. Nicholas Swan, the gardener, when the children came home and told him how Peter had cried--"anyhow, there's one less on you now to run over my borders. He was as meek as Moses, that child was, when first he came, but you soon made him as audacious as any of you."

"So they did, Nicholas dear," said one of the twins, a tall, dark haired child.

"Oh, it's Nicholas _dear_, is it, Miss Barbara? Well, now, what next?"

"Why, the key of the fruit-house--we want the key."

"Key, indeed! Now, there's where it is. Make a wry path through your fields, and still you'll walk in it! I never ought to ha' got in the habit of lending you that key. What's the good of a key if a man can never keep it in his pocket? When I lived up at Mr. Daniel Mortimer's, the children never had my key--never."

"Well, come with us, then, and give us out the pears yourself. We won't take one."

Nicholas, with a twin on each side, and the other children bringing up the rear, was now walked off to the fruit-house, grumbling as he went.

"I left Mr. Mortimer's, I did, because I couldn't stand the children; and now the world's a deal fuller of 'em than it was then. No, Miss Gladys, I'm not a-going any faster; I wouldn't run, if it was ever so.

When the contrac' was signed of my wages, it was never wrote down that I had to run at any time."

And having now reached the fruit-house, he was just pulling out his big key, when something almost like shame showed itself in his ruddy face, as a decided and somewhat mocking voice addressed him.

"Well, Nicholas, I'm just amazed at ye! I've lived upward of sixty years in this island, Scotland and England both, and never did I see a man got over so by children in my life! Talking of my niece's children, are ye--Mrs. Daniel Mortimer's? I wonder at ye--they were just nothing to these."

Here Mr. Swan, having unlocked the door, dived into the fruit-house, and occupied himself for some moments in recovering his self-possession and making his selection; then emerging with an armful of pears, he shouted after Miss Christie Grant, who had got a good way down the walk by this time.

"I don't deny, ma'am, that these air aggravating now and then, but anyhow they haven't painted my palings pink and my door pea-green."

Miss Christie returned. She seldom took the part of any children, excepting for the sake of argument or for family reasons; and she felt at that moment that the Daniel Mortimers were related to her, and that these, though they called her "aunt," were not.

"Ye should remember," she observed, with severity, "that ye had already left your house when they painted it."

"Remember it!" exclaimed the gardener, straightening himself; "ay, ay, I remember it--coming along the lane that my garden sloped down to, so that every inch of it could be seen. It had been all raked over, and there, just out of the ground, growing up in mustard-and-cress letters as long as my arm, I saw '_This genteel residence to let, lately occupied by N. Swan, Esq._' I took my hob-nailed boots to them last words, and I promise you I made the mustard-and-cress fly."

"Well, ye see," observed Miss Christie, who was perfectly serious, "there is great truth in your saying that those children did too much as they pleased; but ye must consider that Mr. Mortimer didn't like to touch any of them, because they were not his own."

"That's just it, ma'am, and Mrs. Mortimer didn't like to touch any of them because they _were her own;_ so between the two they got to be, I don't say as bad as these, but--" Here he shook his head, and leaning his back to the fruit-house door, began diligently to peel the fruit for an a.s.sembly, silent, because eating. "As for Master Giles," he went on, more to torment the old lady than to disparage the gentleman in question, "before ever he went to school, he chalked a picture that he called my arms on the tool house-door, three turnips as natural as life, and a mad kind of bird flourishing its wings about, that he said was a swan displayed. Underneath, for a _morter_, was wrote, 'All our geese air swans.' Now what do you call that for ten years old?"

"Well, well," said Aunt Christie, "that's nearly twenty years ago."

Then the fruit being all finished, N. Swan, Esq., shut up his clasp-knife, and the story being also finished, his audience ran away, excepting Miss Christie, to whom he said--

"But I was fond of those children, you'll understand, though they were powerful plagues."

"Swan," said the old lady, "ye'll never be respect.i.t by children. You're just what ye often call yourself, _soft_."