Fated to Be Free Part 74

"Five.--'To Mrs. M. of M.,'" continued Valentine. "It seems to be a song:--

"'Oh, clear as candles newly snuffed Are those round orbs of thine.'"

"It's false," exclaimed Crayshaw; "Mrs. Melcombe indeed! She's fat, she's three times too old for me."

"Why did you write it, then?" persisted Valentine. "I think this line,--

"'Lovely as waxwork is thy brow,'

"does you great credit. But what avails it! She is now another's. I got her wedding cards this morning. She is married to one Josiah Fothergill, and he lives in Warwick Square.

"Six--'The Black Eye, a Study from Life.'"

"But their things are not all fun, cousin Val," said Gladys, observing, not without pleasure, that Crayshaw was a little put out at Valentine's joke about Mrs. Melcombe. "Cray is going to be a real poet now, and some of his things are very serious indeed."

"This looks very serious," Valentine broke in; "perhaps it is one of them: 'Thoughts on Futurity, coupling with it the name of my Whiskers,'"

"There's his ode to Sincerity," proceeded Gladys; "I am sure you would like that."

"For we tell so many stories, you know," remarked Barbara; "say so many things that we don't mean. Cray thinks we ought not."

"For instance," said Johnnie, "sometimes when people write that they are coming to see us, we answer that we are delighted, when in reality we wish that they were at the bottom of the sea."

"No, no," answered Valentine, in a deprecatory tone; "don't say at the bottom, that sounds unkind. I'm sure I never wished anybody more than half-way down."

Two or three days after this a grand early dinner took place at Melcombe. All the small Mortimers were present, and a number of remarkable keepsakes were bestowed afterwards on Crayshaw by way of dessert. After this, while Mr. and Mrs. John Mortimer sat together in the house the party adjourned to the orchard, and Crayshaw presently appeared with a small box in which had hitherto been concealed his own gifts of like nature. Among them were two gold lockets, one for each of the twins.

"I helped him to choose them," said Johnnie, "and he borrowed the money of his brother."

"There's nothing in them," observed Barbara. "It would be much more romantic if we put in a lock of Cray's hair."

"I thought of that," quoth the donor, "but I knew very well that the first new friend you had, you would turn it out and put his in, just as both of you turned my photograph out of those pretty frames, and put in Prince Leopold after he had pa.s.sed through the town. You are to wear these lockets."

"Oh yes," said Barbara, "and how pretty they are with their little gold chains!"

"Cray, if you will give me a lock of your hair, I promise not to take it out," said Gladys.

She produced a little pair of scissors, and as he sat at her feet, cut off a small curl, and between them they put it in. A certain wistfulness was in her youthful face, but no one noticed it.

"I shouldn't wonder," she remarked, "if you never came back any more."

"Oh yes, I shall," he answered in a tone of equal conviction and carelessness.

"Why? you have no friends at all but us."

"No, I haven't," he answered, and looked up at her as she stood knitting, and leaning against a tree.

"Of course you'll come," exclaimed Johnnie, "you're coming for your wedding tour. Your wife will make you; you're going to be married as soon as you're of age, old fellow."

Then Crayshaw, blushing hotly, essayed to hit Johnnie, who forthwith started up and was pursued by him with many a whoop and shout, in a wild circling chase among the trees. At length, finding he was not to be caught, Crayshaw returned a good deal heated, and Johnnie followed smiling blandly, and flung himself on the gra.s.s breathing hard.

"Well, I'm glad you two are not going to finish up your friendship with another fight," said Valentine.

"He's always prophesying something horrid about me," exclaimed Crayshaw.

"Why am I to be married any more than he is, I should like to know? If I do, you'll certainly have to give up that visit to California, that Mr.

Mortimer almost promised you should make with me. Gladys, I suppose he would not let you and Barbara come too?"

"Oh no. I am sure he would not."

"What fun we might have!"

"Yes."

"I don't see if you were a family man, why it shouldn't be done," said Johnnie, returning to the charge, "but if you won't marry, even to oblige your oldest friends, why you won't."

"Time's up," said Valentine, looking at his watch, "and there's my dog-cart coming round to the door."

The youth rose then with a sigh, took leave of Valentine, and reluctantly turned towards the house, all the young Mortimers following.

They were rather late for the train, so that the parting was hurried, and poor little Gladys as she gazed after the dog-cart, while Johnnie drove and Crayshaw looked back, felt a great aching pain at her heart, and thought she should never forget him.

But perhaps she did.

The young Mortimers were to leave Melcombe themselves the next day, and Valentine was to accompany them home, sleeping one night at their father's house by way of breaking his journey, and seeing his family before he started on his voyage.

He was left alone, and watched his guests as their receding figures were lost among the blossoming trees. He felt strangely weak that afternoon, but he was happy. The lightness of heart that comes of giving up some wrong or undesirable course of action (one that he thought wrong) might long have been his, but he had not hitherto been able to get away from the scene of it.

To-morrow he was to depart. Oh, glad to-morrow!

He laid himself back in his seat, and looked at the blue hills, and listened to the sweet remote voices of the children, let apple-blossoms drop all over him, peered through great brown boughs at the empty sky, and lost himself in a sea of thought which seemed almost as new to him and as fathomless as that was.

Not often does a man pa.s.s his whole life before him and deliberately criticize himself, his actions and his way.

If he does, it is seldom when he would appear to an outsider to have most reasonable occasion; rather during some pause when body and mind both are still.

The soul does not always recognise itself as a guest seated within this frame; sometimes it appears to escape and look at the human life it has led, as if from without. It seems to become absorbed into the august stream of being; to see that fragment _itself_, without self-love, and as the great all of mankind would regard it if laid open to them.

It perceives the inevitable verdict. Thus and thus have I done. They will judge me rightly, that thus and thus I am.

If a man is reasonable and sees things as they were, he does not often fix on some particular act for which to blame himself when he deplores the past, for at times of clear vision, the soul escapes from the bondage of incident. It gets away from the region of particulars, and knows itself by nature even better than by deed. There is a common thought that beggars sympathy in almost every shallow mind. It seldom finds deliberate expression. Perhaps it may be stated thus:--

The greatness of the good derived from it, makes the greatness of the fault.

A man tells a great lie, and saves his character by it. No wonder it weighs on his conscience ever after. And yet perhaps he has told countless lies, both before and since, told them out of mere carelessness, or from petty spite or for small advantages, and utterly forgotten them. Now which of these, looked at by the judge, is the great offender? Is the one lie he repents of the most wicked, or are those that with small temptation he flung about daily, and so made that one notable lie easy?

Was it strange that Valentine, looking back, should not with any special keenness of pain have rued his mistake in taking Melcombe?

No. That was a part of himself. It arose naturally out of his character, which, but for that one action, he felt he never might have fully known.