Frederica and her Guardians Part 31

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

Frederica reached home excited and breathless, and sat down to rest for a moment on the steps, before she went in.

"Miss Frederica--Thank G.o.d," said old Dixen, coming out of the shadow where he had been waiting for the return of his young mistress in great anxiety.

"All right, Dixen--only I am so tired, I cannot tell you about it now."

The hall door opened, and Miss Agnace came out. She, too, was watching, it seemed. Dixen fell back into the shadow again.

"My child, is it you? Where have you been? Not at Mrs Brandon's, for she has been here. We have been in such terror for you."

"You need not have been," said Frederica. "Where is Selina? No, Miss Agnace, I am not going in there, for I am very tired."

She paused a moment at the foot of the stairs, looking up. A kind, half-familiar face looked down on her from above.

"Is it Col. Bentham?" said she, going up slowly. "And papa has come.

Oh! papa! papa?"

Was it her father's face she saw? It was such a face as her father's might have been in his youth, a n.o.bler and better face than his had ever been to her knowledge, though no such thought came into Frederica's mind as she gazed. And who was this beside him, looking at her with Selina's eyes, smiling on her with Selina's smile, and calling her sister?

Frederica grew pale, and trembled more and more.

"Lena," she faltered. "Lena, is it that I am going to be ill again? or am I dreaming?"

"Fred love," said Selina, putting her arms around her, "it is our elder brother Edgar, who has come, and our sister Cecilia, and poor papa--"

But Frederica heard no more, for there was a mist before her eyes, and a buzzing in her ears, and by-and-by she found that Miss Agnace was bathing her face, and Selina was holding her hand, with a pale anxious face. Then she heard a strange voice say,--

"She must drink this, and go to bed at once and no one is to talk to her to-night." And that was almost the last thing she knew, till she awoke next morning with the sunshine on her face.

It was well that the rest of the night came before the excitement of the day that awaited her. For poor Fred had yet to be told that she would never see her father on earth again. Col. Bentham told her first, and then her sister Cecilia told her about his last days; and as she listened, Frederica's thought was--

"Now he is with mama, and nothing will ever happen to make them grieve one another any more."

This thought softened her grief, and made her tears flow gently, as Cecilia went on to tell how sorry he had been about some things; and how he had longed to return to his children and their mother, when it was no longer possible to do so; and how unwillingly he resigned himself to the sad necessity at last.

She told them how his restlessness and impatience went away, and a great change came over him towards the end. He longed to live for his children's sake, but he ceased to be afraid of death, nay, he welcomed the messenger of the King as he drew near.

"Papa must have known all along what mama only learned towards the last, that Jesus died to save His people," said Selina. "Was it that which made him not afraid?"

"He learned it in a new way as he lay upon his bed," said Cecilia. "It was that from which he took comfort at the last. Many a time he said to me, he had nothing else in which to trust."

"And, Fred love, we must not grieve too much. Think how glad mama must be to see him there," said Selina.

All this, and more, was told on that first Sunday morning, but Frederica was not told that day that they had brought her father's body home.

Careless as he had in the old days been about all that did not minister to his own pleasure, in the time of suffering his heart turned with longing unspeakable to those he had left behind, and strange to say, he had entreated to be taken back, to be laid by the side of the wife he had too often neglected and forgotten. And so they had brought him home.

"And did papa ask you to come and take care of us? It was very good in you to come."

"Col. Bentham came to take care of you, and Edgar is to help him. My husband and I came because we wished so much to see you, and because we hoped we might have you home with us for a little while. But that will be decided later."

Frederica had not spoken all this time. She was afraid if she said a word she would break into tears and sobs beyond her power to stay, as had happened once or twice before. But when their brother Edgar came in, she gave a cry, and clasped her sister's hand.

"He is so like papa," she uttered faintly.

"Is he?" said Selina. "I have not seen him yet."

She took her brother's hand, pressing her own small fingers softly and rapidly over it, and then over his face and hair. "Is he like papa?"

asked she doubtingly.

"Like, and yet not like," said Cecilia, and Frederica said the same.

But neither of them said that the likeness was of features only, or of expression.

"Are you better?" asked he of Frederica. "Do you know that it was I who prescribed for you last night?"

"Are you a physician?" asked she.

"I hope to be one some day. Indeed, I am one already, in a way. I am going to take you into my special care, till you are the rosy little girl we used to hear of long ago."

Frederica shook her head sadly. "I am quite changed. I never used to know what it was to be tired. Now I can do nothing, and I am so foolish, that the least thing makes me cry. I am quite ashamed."

"But all that is to be changed now that I am come to take care of you.

You will soon be well and strong again."

And so they talked on, till they were on friendly and familiar terms with each other; and Frederica, rea.s.sured and comparatively cheerful, was able without undue excitement to make the acquaintance of Cecilia's husband, when later he and Col. Bentham came in together.

"Fred love," said Selina, "tell them about Charlie and Hubert."

"Ought I, Selina? must I? I am afraid everybody will think I have been very foolish--perhaps wrong."

"We were alone, and frightened," said Selina. "And there was no one to tell us what we ought to do."

"Of course, if we had known that you were all coming to take care of us, it would not have mattered. We could have waited; but we did not know,"

said Fred deprecatingly.

And then the story was told, partly by one, and partly by the other, how startled they had been when Selina had heard Charlie's voice calling to her in the street. They told of their visit to the school out of which the long procession of boys had come, with Madame Precoe and Father Jerome, and how the people there had been so polite and kind, and how they had put all thoughts of the boys being there out of their minds, till Dixen had told them yesterday that he had seen one of them in the long procession of boys again going up the street.

"Was it yesterday, Lena? It seems a long time ago, since Dixen spoke to us in the garden."

"And the foolish part of the matter is yet to be told," said her brother.

"Then Fred ran away to tell Caroline. But she did not go there, and I only know that she told Dixen it was 'all right,'" said Selina.

"It was foolish, I suppose, but then I did not know what else to do."

They listened to the account she gave them of little Hubert's 'rescue,'

with mingled astonishment and amus.e.m.e.nt, at a loss, when all was told, to decide whether Fred had been very brave or very foolish--inclined rather to agree with the child himself, that no "rescue" had been needed, yet admiring the courage which had accomplished it, and the modesty which deprecated blame rather than claimed admiration for what she had done.

"I daresay Hubert thinks himself a prisoner now, and that he needs to be rescued much more than he did before," said she doubtfully.