CHAPTER XIV
Very shortly after our little party separated, it was time to go back to London to Derwent’s treadmill; our holiday was over—and as Alice had positively declined my invitation to go with us to London, we were again for several months quite separated from our country friends. I heard from them in the meantime various scraps of information, from which I could gather vaguely how their individual concerns went on. Mr. Reredos was again a visitor at the cottage, and Mrs. Harley, who was not in the secret of his previous rejection, wrote to me two or three long, anxious, confidential letters about his evident devotion to her dear girl—and what did I think of it? It was, the good mother said, the position of all others which she would choose for her daughter, if it lay in her decision—a country clergyman’s wife, the same position which she herself had held long ago, when Dr. Harley lived, and she was happy!—but she could not make out what Alice’s mind was. Alice was sometimes cordial and sometimes distant to this candidate for her favor—“And I often fear that it will just be with Mr. Reredos as with the rest,” said Mrs. Harley, despondingly—“and I like him so much—he reminds me of what her dear father was once—and the connection would altogether be so eligible that I should be very sorry if it came to nothing. Do you think, dear Mrs. Crofton, that you could use your influence with her on this subject? My dear girl is so shocked and disgusted with the idea of people marrying for an establishment, that I really do not venture to say a word to her about her own establishment in life; but you know as well as I do, dear Mrs. Crofton, that such things must be thought of, and really this is so thoroughly eligible”–
Alice followed on the same key.
“Mamma teases me again on that everlasting subject, dear Mrs. Crofton; there is some one so completely eligible, she says—and I quite feel it—so entirely eligible that if there was not another in the world! Mamma is provoked, and says if somebody came who was quite the reverse of eligible that I should answer differently—and indeed I am not sure but there is justice in what she says. But do interfere on my behalf, please; I prefer to be always Alice Harley—do, please, dear Mrs. Crofton, persuade my mother not to worry me, but to believe that I know my own mind.”
From which double correspondence I inferred that Mr. Reredos had somehow managed to resume his suit and to make a partisan of Mrs. Harley without giving a desperate and hopeless affront to the pride of Alice, which raised my opinion of his generalship so greatly that I began to imagine there might possibly be some likelihood of success for the Rector—a conclusion which I fear did not gratify me so much as Mrs. Harley had imagined it should.
Along with this information I heard of a sister of Mr. Owen’s, who was paying them a visit—of repeated excursions into Simonborough—of Maurice’s growing relish for home, and some anxieties on the young man’s part about his future life. And Johnnie’s book was published—a book which in my wildest imagination I could not have supposed to be produced by the cripple boy, who, out of the cottage, knew nothing whatever of life. Johnnie’s hero was a hero who did feats of strength and skill unimaginable—tamed horses, knocked down bullies, fought, rode, rowed, and cricketed, after the most approved fashion of the modern youth, heroical and muscular—and in his leisure hours made love!—such love!—full of ecstasies and despairs, quite inconceivable to any imagination above twenty—but all enforced and explained with such perfect ingenuousness and good faith that one could have hugged the boy all the time for the exquisite and delightful folly, in which there did not mix an evil thought. Nothing could well be more remarkable than this fiery outburst of confined and restrained life from the bosom of the cripple, to whom all these active delights were impossible—it was profoundly pathetic too, to me. Poor Johnnie! with that fervid imagination in him, how was he to bear the gray life which Alice had predicted—the life which must be his, notwithstanding all his dreams and hopes? How, when it came to that, was he to undergo the downfall of his first miraculous castle in the air, his vain and violent love-passion? Poor heart, foredoomed! would he ever learn to bring the music of Patience, so lovely to those who hear, so hard to those who make it, out of those life-chords which were drawn all awry, beyond the reach of happiness? I was happy myself in those days. I had little desire to think of the marvellous life to come in which all these problems shall be made clear. I could not cast forward my mind beyond this existence—and the strange inequality between this boy’s mind and his fate vexed me at the heart.
And so, quite quietly and gradually, the time stole on. I heard nothing more from poor Bertie Nugent, in India; he meant to come home, but he had not yet obtained his leave of absence, and it remained quite uncertain when we should see him. Everything was very quiet at home. Our fighting was over—our national pride and confidence in our own arms and soldiers, revived by actual experience; everything looking prosperous within the country, and nothing dangerous without.
It was at this time that the dreadful news of the Indian mutiny came upon the country like the shock of an earthquake. News more frightful never startled a peaceful people. Faces paled, and hearts sickened, even among people who had no friends in that deadly peril; and as for us, who had relatives and connections to be anxious for, it is impossible to describe the fear that took possession of us. I knew nobody there but Bertie, and he, thank Heaven, was but a man, and could only be killed at the worst; but I had people belonging to me there, though I did not know them; people whom I had heard of for years and years, though I had never seen them; cousins, and such like—Nugents—with women among them—God help us! creatures who might have to bear tortures more cruel than death. The thought woke me up into a restless fever of horror and anxiety, which I cannot describe. Perhaps I felt the hideous contrast more because of my own perfect safety and happiness, but I could neither sleep by night nor smile by day, for the vision of that horrible anguish which had fallen upon some, and might be—might be—for anything I knew—at any moment—ah! the thought was too much for flesh and blood. It was growing towards autumn, yet I, who hated London, was reluctant that year to leave it. We were nearer to those news which it was so sickening to hear, yet so dreadful to be out of reach of, and it seemed to me as if it would be impossible to go into those tranquil country places, where all was happy, and still, and prosperous, with such a cloud of horror, and fear, and rage about one’s heart. At that time I almost think I could have heard without any great additional pang that Bertie himself had been killed. He was a man, thank Heaven, and they could only kill him! Mere family affection was lost for the moment in the overpowering horror of the time.
But the first miseries were over by the time we went to Hilfont—it had begun to be a fight of man to man—that is to say, of one man to some certain number of heathen creatures, from a dozen to a hundred—and the news, breathless news, mad with gasps of grief, anxiety, and thanksgiving, did not now strike such horror and chill to our blood. We went home and quieted ourselves, and grew anxious about Bertie—very anxious. Of course he was in the thick of the fight. If he had not been, could we ever have forgiven him?—but he was, and we had only to wait, and long, and tremble for news, to catch here and there a glimpse of him through obscure telegraphic reports, and slow dispatches, coming long, long, and slow, after that bewildering, tantalizing snatch of half-comprehensible tidings. Then I saw, for the first time, how thoroughly the young man, though he had been away eight years, kept his hold upon our hearts. Derwent would ride a dozen miles to the railway for a chance of hearing a little earlier than was possible at Hilfont, when the new news came in; everybody about the house looked breathless till they heard if the Captain, as they called him, was still safe. As for Alice Harley, I do not remember that she ever asked a question—she went and came about the house, read all the papers, listened to all the conversations, stood by and heard everything, while her sister Clara poured forth inquiry upon inquiry, while the gentlemen discussed the whole matter, and decided what everybody must do; while even Lady Greenfield, drawn towards me, though we were but indifferent friends, by a common touch of nature (for I cannot deny that she liked her nephews), consulted and argued where Bertie could be now, and wished him safe home. My little Derwent, with a flush on his childish cheeks, and tears in his eyes, cried out against her; “Do you think Bertie will come safe home when they are murdering the women and the babies?” cried Derwie, with a half-scream of childish excitement. “Bertie?—if he did, I would like to kill him; but he never, never, will till they’re all on board the ships—he had better be killed than come safe home!”
The tears were in my own eyes, so that I did not see the child very clearly as he spoke; but I saw Alice bend quickly down to kiss him, and heard in the room the sound of one sob—a sound surprised out of somebody’s heart. Not Lady Greenfield’s, who put her handkerchief to her eyes, and said that really she was only human, and might be forgiven for wishing her own relations safe. Miss Polly had come with her sister-in-law that day—she was paler than ever, the tender old lady. She cried a little as we talked, but it was not out of her calm old heart that such a sob of anguish and passion came.
“My dear,” said Miss Polly, speaking as if she addressed me, but not looking in my direction, “I’m afraid Derwie’s right; if he die he must do his duty—there’s no talk of being safe in such times.”
“It is very easy for you to speak,” said Lady Greenfield, and I believe she thought so; “but Clare and I feel differently—he is not a relation of yours.”
“I pray for the dear boy, night and morning, all the same. God bless him, at this moment, wherever he may be!” said Miss Polly. I was conscious of a quick, sudden movement as the words fell, soft and grave, from her dear old lips. It was Alice who had left the room.
She could not bear it any longer. She did not belong to him—she was not old enough to speak like Miss Polly—she durst not flutter forth her anxiety for her old playfellow as Clara did. Her heart was throbbing and burning in her young warm breast. She did not say a word or ask a question; but when the tender old woman bade God bless him, Alice could stand quiet no longer. I knew it, though she had not a word to say.
CHAPTER XV
This time of anxiety was one which, in that great common interest and grief, drew many people together who had little sympathy with each other in ordinary times. Many a close, private, confidential talk, deluged with tears, or tremulous with hope, I had within these days with many a troubled woman, who up to that time had been only an acquaintance, or very slightly known to me, but who was now ready, at the touch of this magical sympathy, to take me into her heart. Derwent’s custom of riding to the railway for the earliest perusable news, and an occasional message by telegraph, which came to him when any important intelligence arrived, made our house besieged by anxious people, to whom the greatest joy of their lives was to find no mention in these breathless dispatches of the individual or the place in which they were interested. Nugents, whom I had never heard of, started up everywhere, asking from me information about Bertie and his family. The girls who had been brought up at Estcourt deluged me with letters asking after him. I am not sure that our entire household did not feel, amid all its anxiety, a little pride in the consciousness of thus having a share in the universal national sympathy which was bestowed so warmly and freely upon all who had friends in India. As for little Derwie, he devoted himself entirely now to the business of carrying news. He knew already by heart the list of all the families—I had almost said in all the county, certainly between Hilfont and Simonborough—who had soldier-sons; and Derwie and his pony flew along all the country roads for days together when news came, the child carrying in his faithful childish memory every detail of the dispatch to the cottage women, who had no other means of hearing it. The people about—that is to say, Miss Reredos and the important people of the village—called my boy the telegraph-boy, and I am not quite sure that I was not rather proud of the name. Whether his news-carrying always did good I will not say—perhaps it was little comfort to the mother of a nameless rank-and-file man to hear that another battle had been won, or a successful march made, in which, perhaps, God knows, that undistinguished boy of hers might have fainted and fallen aside to die. But the common people—God bless them!—are more hopeful in their laborious hearts than we who have leisure to think all our anxieties out, and grow sick over them.
Derwie flew here and there on his pony, telling the news—possessed with it to the exclusion of every other thought—and I could but be thankful that he was a child, and the telegraph-boy, not a man, able to set out with a heart of flame to that desperate and furious strife.
I surprised a nursery party at this memorable period in the expression of their sentiments. It was somebody’s birthday at Waterflag, and all the little people were collected there. Derwent had been telling them of a feat performed in India by a Flintshire man, which all the newspapers had celebrated, and which we were all rather proud of. Derwie, in his capacity of newsboy, read the papers to the best of his ability, with very original readings of the Indian names, but he was much more thoroughly informed than any of the others—by reason of his trade—and they listened to him as to an oracle. Then came an account of the mutiny and all its frightful consequences, as well as Derwie knew. The children listened absorbed, the girls being, as I rather think is very common, much the most greatly excited. Willie Sedgwick, the chubby pink and white heir, who looked so much younger than Derwie, sat silent, fingering his buttons, and with no remarkable expression in his face; but Miss Polly’s two nieces bent down from their height of superior stature to listen, and Clara Sedgwick—lovely little coquette—stood in the middle of the room, arrested in something she had been doing, breathless, her little face burning with the strongest childish excitement. She was not now arrayed in that glorious apparel which had captivated Derwie and myself in the spring. It was only a simple gray morning frock, which was expanded upon her infantine crinoline at this moment; but her beautiful little figure, all palpitating with wonder, wrath, and excitement, was a sight to see.
“Oh!” cried out the child, stamping her little foot, as Derwie, breathless himself, paused in his tale—“oh! if I had only a gun, I would take hold of papa’s hand and shoot them all!”
“Ah!” cried Emmy, whose thoughts had been doubtless following the same track, and to whom this sudden sense of a want which, perhaps, she scarcely realized in ordinary times, came sharp in sudden contrast with that exclamation of Clary’s—“Ah, Clary!” cried the poor child, with a shrill accent in the momentary pang it gave her, “but we have no papa.” It struck me like a sudden passionate, artless postscript of personal grief, striking its key-note upon the big impersonal calamity which raised, even in these children’s bosoms, such generous horror and indignation.
“He was killed in India,” said Di, in a low tone, her womanly little face growing dark with a sudden twilight of feeling more serious than her years.
“They don’t want us to fight,” said Derwie, whom this personal digression did not withdraw from his main interest; “you may be sure, Clary, they don’t want a little thing like you, or me, or Willie; to be sure, if we had been older!—but never mind, there’s sure to be somebody to fight with when we’re big enough; and then there’s such famous fellows there—there’s Sam Rivers, I was telling you of, that Huntingdonshire man; I know his mother, I’ll take you to see her, if you like; and there’s Bertie—there’s our Bertie, don’t you know?—he’ll never come home till they’re all safe, or till he’s killed.”
“If he’s killed he’ll never come back,” said Willie Sedgwick.
“Oh, I wish you would go away, you horrid great boy!” cried Clary, indignantly—“Killed! when you know mamma is so fond of Mrs. Crofton’s Bertie, and loves him as much as Uncle Maurice!—but Willie doesn’t care for anything,” she said, in an aggrieved tone, turning away from her brother with a disgust which I slightly shared.
“I could bear him to be killed,” said Derwie, who, poor child, had never seen the hero he discussed, “if he did something worth while first—like that one, you know, who blew himself up, or that one”–
“But, Derwie, what was the good of blowing himself up,” said Clary, with wondering round eyes.
“Don’t you see?” cried Derwie, impatiently; “why, to destroy the powder and things, to be sure, that they might not have it to fire at us.”
“I’d have poured water all on the powder, if it had been me, and spoiled it without hurting any one,” said the prudent Willie.
“As if he had time to think about hurting any one!” said Derwie—“as if he didn’t just do it—the first thought that came into his head.”
“Oh, Derwent!” cried Clary again, “if they were all—every one—ten thousand thousand, standing up before one big gun, and papa would only take hold of my hand, I would fire it off!”
“Aunty says we should forgive,” said Miss Polly’s gentle Di, in a low voice; “’tis dreadful to be killed, but it would be worse to kill somebody else.”
“I don’t think so at all,” cried Clary, “I would kill them every one if I could—every one that did such horrid, cruel, wicked things. I hope Bertie will kill ever so many—hundreds! Don’t you hope so, Derwie? I would if I were him.”
This sanguinary speech was interrupted by an arrival of nurses and attendants, and Clary, quite beautiful in her childish fury, went off to make a captivating toilette for the early childs’ dinner, where everybody was to appear in gala costume, to do honor to the birthday hero. The elder Clara, the child’s mother, had been standing with me in one end of the great nursery, listening to this discussion. She turned round with a laugh when the party had dispersed.
“What a little wretch!” said Clara; “but oh! Mrs. Crofton, isn’t it absurd what people say about children’s gentleness and sweetness, and all that? I know there is never a story told in my nursery of a wicked giant, or a bad uncle, or anything of that sort, but the very baby, if he could speak, would give his vote for cutting the villain up in little pieces. There never were such cruel imps. They quite shout with satisfaction when that poor innocent giant, who never did any harm that I can see, tumbles down the beanstalk and gets killed—though I am sure that impudent little thief Jack deserves it a great deal more. But what a memory Derwie has!—and how he understands! I am sure, I hope most sincerely that Bertie, after all, will get safe home. Is there any more news?”
“No more,” said I, “I have not heard from himself a long time now—and the public news only keeps us anxious. I am not quite so philosophical as Derwie—few things would make me so thankful as to hear that Bertie was on his way home.”
“Oh, I should be so glad!” said Clara, eagerly; then, after a pause and with a smile, “young men who want their friends to get dreadfully interested about them should all go out—don’t you think, Mrs. Crofton? There is Alice, for example. I thought everything was coming round quite nicely, and that Alice was going to be quite rational, and settle like other people, at last—but just when everything seemed in such excellent train, lo! here came this Indian business, and upset the whole again.”
“Upset what? I don’t understand what you mean,” said I, with a little wonder, partly affected and partly real.
“Oh, Mrs. Crofton! you do,” cried Clara; “you know mamma and I had just been making up our minds that Mr. Reredos was the person, and that all was to be quite pleasant and comfortable. He was so attentive, and Alice really so much better behaved than she had ever been before. Then this Indian business, you know, happened, and she was all in a craze again. She doesn’t say much, but I am quite sure it is nothing else that has upset her. Of course, looking at it in a rational way, Bertie and Alice can’t really be anything to each other. But he’s far away, and he’s in danger, and there’s quite an air of romance about him. And Alice is so ridiculous! I am quite sure in my own mind that this is the only reason why she’s so very cool to the Rector again.”
“It is very injudicious to say so, Clara,” said I; “of course she must be interested—her old playfellow—like a brother to you both; but as for interposing between her and an eligible”–
“Now, please don’t be rational,” pleaded Clara, “I know exactly what you are going to say—but after all she must marry somebody, you know, and where is the harm of an eligible establishment? Perhaps it would be as well if mamma did not use the word—but still!—oh! to be sure, dear, good, kind Bertie—the children are quite right,” said Clara, with a sweet suffusion of kindness and good feeling over all her face—“I am sure I love him every bit as much as I love Maurice—he was always like a brother, the dear fellow! I don’t say Alice should not be interested in him; but only it’s all her romance, you know. She’s not in love with him—if she were in love with him, I couldn’t say a word—it’s only sympathy, and friendship, and sisterhood, and all that; and because he’s in trouble she’ll forget all about herself, and send this good man, who is very fond of her, away.”
“These young ladies, you see, Clara,” said I, “they are not at all to be depended on; they never will attend to what we experienced people say.”
“Ah, yes, that is true,” said Alice’s younger sister, with a sigh of serious acquiescence, and the simplest good faith.
Clara, with her five babies, had forgotten that she was not her sister’s senior—while Alice, for her part, looking down from her quiet observatory in her brown silk dress upon Clara’s wonderful toilettes and blooming beauty, felt herself a whole century older than that pretty matron-sister, who was always so sweetly occupied with life, and had so little time for thought. I smiled upon them both, being near twenty years their senior, and thought them a couple of children still. So we all go on, thinking ourself the wisest always. In these days I began to moralize a little. I have no doubt Miss Polly had similar thoughts of me.