John Halifax, Gentleman Part 112

"Yes."

"Why don't you kiss me? Everybody kisses me," said everybody's pet; neither frightened nor shy; never dreaming of a repulse.

Nor did she find it. Her little fingers were suffered to cling round the tightly-closed hand.

"What is your name, my dear?"

"Louise--mamma's little Louise."

Guy put back the curls, and gazed long and wistfully into the childish face, where the inherited beauty was repeated line for line. But softened, spiritualised, as, years after its burial, some ghost of a man's old sorrows may rise up and meet him, the very spirit of peace shining out of its celestial eyes.

"Little Louise, you are very like--"

He stopped--and bending down, kissed her. In that kiss vanished for ever the last shadow of his boyhood's love. Not that he forgot it--G.o.d forbid that any good man should ever either forget or be ashamed of his first love! But it and all its pain fled far away, back into the sacred eternities of dreamland.

When, looking up at last, he saw a large, fair, matronly lady sitting by his mother's sofa, Guy neither started nor turned pale. It was another, and not his lost Louise. He rose and offered her his hand.

"You see, your little daughter has made friends with me already. She is very like you; only she has Edwin's hair. Where is my brother Edwin?"

"Here, old fellow. Welcome home."

The two brothers met warmly, nay, affectionately. Edwin was not given to demonstration; but I saw how his features twitched, and how he busied himself over the knots in his little girl's pinafore for a minute or more. When he spoke again it was as if nothing had happened and Guy had never been away.

For the mother, she lay with her arms folded, looking from one to the other mutely, or closing her eyes with a faint stirring of the lips, like prayer. It seemed as if she dared only THUS to meet her exceeding joy.

Soon, Edwin and Louise left us for an hour or two, and Guy went on with the history of his life in America and his partner who had come home with him, and, like himself, had lost his all.

"Harder for him than for me; he is older than I am. He knew nothing whatever of business when he offered himself as my clerk; since then he has worked like a slave. In a fever I had he nursed me; he has been to me these three years the best, truest friend. He is the n.o.blest fellow. Father, if you only knew--"

"Well, my son, let me know him. Invite the gentleman to Beechwood; or shall I write and ask him? Maud, fetch me your mother's desk. Now then, Guy--you are a very forgetful fellow still; you have never yet told us your friend's name."

Guy looked steadily at his father, in his own straightforward way; hesitated--then apparently made up his mind.

"I did not tell you because he wished me not; not till you understood him as well as I do. You knew him yourself once--but he has wisely dropped his t.i.tle. Since he came over to me in America he has been only Mr. William Ravenel."

This discovery--natural enough when one began to think over it, but incredible at first, astounded us all. For Maud--well was it that the little Louise seated in her lap hid and controlled in some measure the violent agitation of poor Auntie Maud.

Ay--Maud loved him. Perhaps she had guessed the secret cause of his departure, and love creates love often times. Then his brave renunciation of rank, fortune, even of herself--women glory in a moral hero--one who has strength to lose even love, and bear its loss, for the sake of duty or of honour. His absence, too, might have done much:--absence which smothers into decay a rootless fancy, but often nourishes the least seed of a true affection into full-flowering love.

Ay--Maud loved him. How, or why, or when, at first no one could tell--perhaps not even herself; but so it was, and her parents saw it.

Both were deeply moved--her brother likewise.

"Father," he whispered, "have I done wrong? I did not know--how could I guess?"

"No, no--my son. It is very strange--all things just now seem so strange. Maud, my child,"--and John roused himself out of a long silence into which he was falling,--"go, and take Louise to her mother."

The girl rose, eager to get away. As she crossed the room--the little creature clinging round her neck, and she clasping it close, in the sweet motherliness of character which had come to her so early--I thought--I hoped--

"Maud!" said John, catching her hand as she pa.s.sed him by--"Maud is not afraid of her father?"

"No,"--in troubled uncertainty--then with a pa.s.sionate decision, as if ashamed of herself--

"No!"

She leaned over his chair-back and kissed him--then went out.

"Now--Guy."

Guy told, in his own frank way, all the history of himself and William Ravenel; how the latter had come to America, determined to throw his lot for good or ill, to sink or swim, with Maud's brother--chiefly, as Guy had slowly discovered, because he was Maud's brother. At last--in the open boat, on the Atlantic, with death the great revealer of all things staring them in the face--the whole secret came out. It made them better than friends--brothers.

This was Guy's story, told with a certain spice of determination too, as if--let his father's will be what it might, his own, which had now also settled into the strong "family" will, was resolute on his friend's behalf. Yet when he saw how grave, nay sad, the father sat, he became humble again, and ended his tale even as he had begun, with the entreaty--"Father, if you only knew--"

"My knowing and my judging seem to have been of little value, my son.

Be it so. There is One wiser than I--One in whose hands are the issues of all things."

The sort of contrition with which he spoke--thus retracting, as it costs most men so much to retract, a decision given however justly at the time, but which fate has afterwards p.r.o.nounced unjust, affected his son deeply.

"Father, your decision was right--William says it was. He says also, that it could not have been otherwise; that whatever he has become since, he owes it all to you, and to what pa.s.sed that day. Though he loves her still, will never love any one else; yet he declares his loss of her has proved his salvation."

"He is right," said Mrs. Halifax. "Love is worth nothing that will not stand trial--a fiery trial, if needs be. And as I have heard John say many and many a time--as he said that very night--in this world there is not, ought not to be, any such words as 'too late.'"

John made no answer. He sat, his chin propped on his right hand, the other pressed against his bosom--his favourite att.i.tude. Once or twice, with a deep-drawn, painful breath, he sighed.

Guy's eagerness could not rest. "Father, I told him I would either write to or see him to-day."

"Where is he?"

"At Norton Bury. Nothing could induce him to come here, unless certain that you desired it."

"I do desire it."

Guy started up with great joy. "Shall I write, then?"

"I will write myself."

But John's hand shook so much, that instead of his customary free, bold writing, he left only blots upon the page. He leant back in his chair, and said faintly--

"I am getting an old man, I see. Guy, it was high time you came home."

Mrs. Halifax thought he was tired, and made a place for his head on her pillow, where he rested some minutes, "just to please her," he said.

Then he rose and declared he would himself drive over to Norton Bury for our old friend.

"Nay, let me write, father. To-morrow will do just as well."

The father shook his head. "No--it must be to-day."

Bidding good-bye to his wife--he never by any chance quitted her for an hour without a special tender leave-taking--John went away.

Guy was, he avouched, "as happy as a king." His old liveliness returned; he declared that in this matter, which had long weighed heavily on his mind, he had acted like a great diplomatist, or like the G.o.ds themselves, whom some unexacting, humble youth calls upon to