My Young Alcides: A Faded Photograph Part 22

"Yes. It will be the best way to break out of the old lines."

"I can fancy that. Oh, Harold! are you going to save him? That will be the most blessed work of all!" I cried, for somehow a feeling like an air of hope and joy came over me.

"I don't know about that," said he, in a smothered tone; but it was getting dark enough to loose his tongue, and when I asked, "Was it his illness that made him wish it?" he answered, "It was coming before.

Lucy, those horses have done worse for him than that wound in his shoulder. They had almost eaten the very heart out of him!"

"His substance I know they have," I said; "but not his good warm heart."

"You would say so if you saw the poor wretches on his property," said Harold. "The hovels in the Alfy Valley were palaces compared with the cabins. Such misery I never saw. They say it is better since the famine. What must it have been then? And he thinking only how much his agent could squeeze from them!"

I could only say he had been bred up in neglect of them, and to think them impracticable, priest-ridden traitors and murderers. Yes, Lady Diana had said some of this to Harold already, It was true that they had shot Mr. Tracy, but Harold had learnt that after a wild, reckless, spendthrift youth, he had become a Protestant and a violent Orangeman in the hottest days of party strife, so that he had incurred a special hatred, which, as far as Harold could see, was not extended to the son, little as he did for his tenants but show them his careless, gracious countenance from time to time.

Yet peril for the sake of duty would, as all saw now, have been far better for Dermot than the alienation from all such calls in which his mother had brought him up. When her religious influence failed with him, there was no other restraint. Since he had left the army, he had been drawn, by those evil geniuses of his, deep into speculations in training horses for the turf, and his affairs had come into a frightful state of entanglement, his venture at Doncaster had been unsuccessful, and plunged him deeper into his difficulties, and then (as I came to know) Harold's absolute startled amazement how any living man could screw and starve men, women, and children for the sake of horseflesh, and his utter contempt for such diversions as he had been shown at the races, compared with the pleasure of making human beings happy and improving one's land, had opened Dermot's eyes with very few words.

The thought was not new when the danger of death made him look back on those wasted years; and resolution began with the dawning of convalescence, that if he could only free himself from his entanglements--and terrible complications they were--he would begin a new life, worthy of having been given back to him. In many a midnight watch he had spoken of these things, and Harold had soothed him by a promise to use that accountant's head of his in seeing how to free him as soon as he was well enough. Biston and the horses would be sold, and he could turn his mind to his Irish tenants, who, as he already saw, loved him far better than he deserved. He caught eagerly at the idea of going out to Australia with Harold, and it did indeed seem that my brave-hearted nephew was effecting a far greater deliverance for him than that from the teeth and hoofs of wicked Sheelah.

"But you will not stay, Harold? You will come home?" I said.

"I mean it," he answered.

"Then I don't so much mind," said I, with infinite relief; and he added, thinking that I wanted further rea.s.surance, that he should never give up trying to get Prometesky's pardon; and that this was only a journey for supplies, and to see his old friend, and perhaps to try whether anything could be done about that other unhappy Harry. I pressed him to promise me that he would return and settle here, but though he said he would come back, to settling at home he answered, "That depends;" and though I could not see, I knew he was biting his moustache, and guessed, poor dear fellow, that it depended on how far he should be able to endure the sight of Eustace and Viola married. I saw now that I had been blind not to perceive before that his heart had been going out to Viola all this time, while he thought he was courting her for Eustace, and I also had my thoughts about Viola, which made it no very great surprise to me, when, in a few days more, intelligence came that Eustace might be expected at home, and he made his appearance in a petulant though still conceited mood, that made me suspect his wooing had not been prosperous, though I knew nothing till Harold told me that he was not out of heart, though Viola had cut him short and refused to listen to him, for her mother said she was a mere child who was taken by surprise, and that if he were patient and returned to the charge she would know her own mind better.

Harold was certainly more exhilarated than he chose to avow to himself on this discovery, and the next week came a letter from Lady Diana, and a short note from Dermot himself, both saying he had not been so well, and begging Harold to come and a.s.sist in the removal, since Dermot protested that otherwise he could not bear the journey, and his mother declared that she should be afraid to think of it for him.

Viola's. .h.i.therto constant correspondence had ceased; I drew my own auguries, but I had to keep them to myself, for Harold started off the next day in renewed spirits, and I had Eustace on my hands in a very strange state, not choosing or deigning to suppose himself rejected, and yet exceedingly, angry with all young ladies for their silliness and caprices, while he lauded Lady Diana up to the skies, and abused Dermot, who, I think, had laughed at him visibly enough to be at least suspected by himself. And, oddly enough, Dora was equally cross, and had a fit of untowardness unequalled since the combats at her first arrival, till I was almost provoked into acquiescence in Eustace's threat of sending her to school.

The journey was at last accomplished; Harold only parted with the Tracys at Arked House, after having helped to carry Dermot to the room that had been prepared for him on the ground-floor.

I rode over the next afternoon to inquire, and was delighted to meet Viola close within the gate. We sent away my horse, and she drew me into her favourite path while answering my questions that Dermot had had a good night and was getting up; I should find him in the drawing-room if I waited a little while. She could have me all to herself, for mamma was closeted with Uncle Ery, talking over things--and on some word or sound of mine betraying that I guessed what things, it broke out.

"How could you let him do it, Lucy? You, at least, must have known better."

"My dear, how could I have stopped him, with all St. George's Channel between us?"

"Well, at any rate, you might persuade them all to have a little sense, and not treat me as if I was one of the elegant females in 'Pride and Prejudice,' who only refuse for fun! Is not that enough to drive one frantic, Lucy? Can't you at least persuade the man himself?"

"Only one person can do that, Viola."

"But I can't! That's the horrid part of it. I can't get rid of it.

Mamma says I am a foolish child. I could tell her of other people more foolish than I am. I can see the difference between sham and reality, if they can't."

"I don't think he means to be sham," I rambled into defence of Eustace.

"Means it! No, he hasn't the sense. I believe he really thinks it was he who saved Dermot's life as entirely as mamma does."

"No. Now do they really?"

"Of course, as they do with everything. It's always 'The page slew the boar, the peer had the gloire.'"

"It's the page's own fault," I said. "He only wants the peer to have the gloire."

"And very disagreeable and deceitful it is of him," cried Viola; "only he hasn't got a sc.r.a.p of deceit in him, and that's the reason he does it so naturally. No, you may tell them that borrowed plumes won't always serve, and there are things that can't be done by deputy."

And therewith Viola, perhaps perceiving what she had betrayed, turned more crimson than ever, and hid her face against me with a sob in her breath, and then I was quite sure of what I did not dare to express, further than by saying, while I caressed her, "I believe they honestly think it is all the same."

"But it isn't," said Viola, recovering, and trying to talk and laugh off her confusion. "I don't think so, and poor Dermot did not find it so when the wrong one was left to lift him, and just ran his great stupid arm into the tenderest place in his side, and always stepped on all the boards that creak, and upset the table of physic bottles, and then said it was Harold's way of propping them up! And that's the creature they expect me to believe in!"

We turned at the moment and saw a handkerchief beckoning to us from the window; and going in, found Dermot established on a couch under it, and Harold packing him up in rugs, a sight that amazed both of us; but Dermot said, "Yes, he treats me like Miss Stympson's dog, you see.

Comes over by stealth when I want him."

Dermot did look very ill and pain-worn, and his left arm lay useless across him, but there was a kind of light about his eyes that I had not seen for a long time, as he made Harold set a chair for me close to him, and he and Viola told the adventures of their journey, with mirth in their own style, and Harold stood leaning against the shutter with his look of perfect present content, as if basking in sunshine while it lasted.

When the mother and uncle came in, it was manifestly time for us to convey ourselves away. Harold had come on foot from Mycening, but I was only too glad to walk my pony along the lanes, and have his company in the gathering winter twilight.

"You have spoken to her?" he said.

"Yes. Harold, it is of no use. She will never have him."

"Her mother thinks she will."

"Her mother knows what is in Viola no more than she knows what is in that star. Has Dermot never said anything--"

"Lady Diana made everyone promise not to say a word to him."

"Oh!"

"But, Lucy, what hinders it? There's nothing else in the way, is there?"

I did not speak the word, but made a gesture of a.s.sent.

"May I know who it is," said Harold in a voice of pain. "Our poor fellow shall never hear."

"Harold," said I, "are you really so ridiculous as to think any girl could care for Eustace while you are by?"

"Don't!" cried Harold, with a sound as of far more pain than gladness.

"But why not, Harry? You asked me."

"Don't light up what I have been struggling to quench ever since I knew it."

"Why?" I went on. "You need not hold back on Eustace's account. I am quite sure nothing would make her accept him, and I am equally convinced--"

"Hush, Lucy!" he said in a scarcely audible voice. "It is profanation.

Remember--"

"But all that is over," I said. "Things that happened when you were a mere boy, and knew no better, do not seem to belong to you now."

"Sometimes they do not," he said sadly; "but--"