Fated to Be Free Part 70

John noticed that he walked as if weary, or reluctant perhaps to leave them. He was the only person who noticed anything, for you must understand that the place was full of nests. All sorts of birds built there, even herons; and to stand at the brink of the glen, and actually see them--look down on to the glossy backs of the brooding mothers, and count the nests--wealth incalculable of eggs, and that of all sorts,--to do this, and not to be sure yet whether you shall ever finger them, is a sensation for a boy that, as Mr. Weller said, "is more easier conceived than described."

And so Valentine went in. There were two appointments for him to keep, one with his doctor, one with his lawyer. The first told him he had unduly tired himself, and should lie down. So lying down, in his grandmother's favourite sitting-room, he received the second, but could decide on nothing, because he had not yet found opportunity to consult the person princ.i.p.ally concerned.

So after the man of law had departed, Valentine continued to lie quietly on the sofa for perhaps an hour; he closed his eyes, and had almost the air of a man who is trying to gather strength for something that he has to do.

Children's voices roused him at last. Emily was moving up the garden towards the house, leaning on John's arm; the two younger children were with them, all the others having dispersed themselves about the place.

Valentine sat up to gaze, and as their faces got nearer a sudden anguish, that was not envy, overcame him.

It was not so much the splendour of manly prime and strength that struck him with the contrast to himself, not so much even the sight of love, as of hope, and spring, and bloom, that were more than he could bear. How sufficient to themselves they seemed! How charming Emily was! A woman destined to inspire a life-long love seldom shows much consciousness of it. "I never saw a fellow so deeply in love with his wife," thought Valentine. "Surely she knows it. What are you saying to her, John?" They had stopped under the great fruit-trees near the garden-door. John bent down one of the blossom-laden boughs, and she, fair, and almost pale, stood in the delicate white shadow looking at it.

Beautiful manhood and womanhood! beautiful childhood, and health, and peace! Valentine laid himself down again and shut his eyes.

Emily had betrayed a little anxiety about him that morning. He was very thin, she said; he must take care of himself.

"Oh, yes," he had answered, "I shall do that. I have been very unwell, but I am better now." And then he had noticed that John looked at him uneasily, and seemed disturbed when he coughed. He thought that as they stood under the fruit-trees John had caught sight of him.

"I knew he would come up as soon as he found opportunity, and here he is," thought Valentine, not moving from his place, but simply lifting up his head as John entered. "What have you done with Emily?" he asked.

"Emily is gone up to her dressing-room. She means to hear the children read."

"Ah," exclaimed Valentine, with a sudden laugh of good-humoured raillery, "of all womankind, John, you have evidently secured the pearl, the 'one entire and perfect chrysolite.' You know you think so."

"Yes," answered John gravely, "but don't put me off, my dear fellow."

"What do you want? What do you mean?" said Valentine, for John sitting down near him, held out his hand. "Oh, nonsense; I'm all right." But he put his own into it, and let John with his other hand push up the sleeve of his coat.

"Too thin by half, isn't it?" he said, affecting indifference, as John gravely relinquished it; "but I am so mummied up in flannels that it doesn't show much."

"My dear fellow," John Mortimer repeated.

"Yes, I have been long unwell, but now I have leave to start in one week, John. I'm to take a sea voyage. You told me you could only stay here a few days, and there is a great deal that ought to be done while you are here. Don't look so dismayed, the doctors give me every hope that I shall be all right again."

"I devoutly hope so----"

"There's nothing to drive the blood from your manly visage," Valentine said lightly, then went on, "There is one thing that I ought not to have neglected so long, and if I were in the best health possible I still ought to do it, before I take a long sea voyage." He spoke now almost with irritation, as if he longed to leave the subject of his health and was urgent to talk of business matters. John Mortimer, with as much indifference as he could a.s.sume, tried to meet his wishes.

"You have been in possession of this estate almost a year," he said, "so I hope, indeed I a.s.sume, that the making of a will is not what you have neglected?"

"But it is."

Rather an awkward thing this to be said to the heir-at-law. He paused for a moment, then remarked, "I met just now, driving away from your door, the very man who read to us our grandmother's will."

"I have been telling him that he shall make one for me forthwith."

"When I consider that you have many claims," said John, "and consider further that your property is all land, I wonder at your----"

"My neglect. Yes, I knew you would say so."

"When shall this be done then?"

"To-morrow."

Then Valentine began to talk of other matters, and he expressed, with a directness certainly not called for, his regret that John Mortimer should have made the sacrifices he had acknowledged to, in order eventually to withdraw his name and interest altogether from his banking affairs.

John was evidently surprised, but he took Valentine's remarks good-humouredly.

"I know you have had losses," continued Valentine. "But now you have got a partner, and----"

"It's all settled," said John, declining to argue the question.

"You fully mean to retire from probable riches to a moderate competence?"

"Quite; I have, as you say, made great sacrifices in order to do so."

"I rather wonder at you," Valentine added; "there was no great risk, hardly any, in fact."

"I do not at all repent my choice," said John with a smile in his eyes that showed Valentine how useless it was to say more. John was amused, surprised, but not moved at all from his determination. He thought proper to add, "My father, as you know, left two thousand pounds each to every one of my children."

"And he gave the same sum to me," Valentine broke in. "You said my property was all land, but it is not. And so, John, you will no longer be a rich man."

"I shall be able to live just as I do at present," answered John Mortimer, calmly turning him round to his own duty. "And you have relatives who are decidedly poor. Then one of your sisters has married a curate without a shilling, or any seeming chance of preferment; and your brother, to whom you owe so much, has cramped his resources very much for the sake of his mother's family. Of course, when I married Emily, I insisted on repaying him the one thousand pounds he had made over to her on her first marriage, but----"

"Giles is very fairly off," interrupted Valentine, "and some day no doubt his wife will have a good fortune."

"I thought the old man had settled eight thousand pounds on her."

"He made a settlement on her when she was to marry me, and he signed it.

But that settlement was of no use when she married St. George."

"Had he the imprudence, then, to leave everything to chance?"

"Even so. But, John, St. George will never have a single acre of Melcombe."

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

A PRIVATE CONSULTATION.

"Remove from me the way of lying...I have chosen the way of truth."--PSALM cxix. 29, 30.

"Why, you young rogues, you make your father blush for your appet.i.tes,"

said John Mortimer to his boys, when he saw Valentine at the head of the table, serving out great slices of roast beef at a luncheon which was also to be early dinner for the children.

Valentine had placed Emily at the other end of the table. "Take my place, John," he now said laughing, "I always was a most wretched carver."