Chapter Nineteen.
After Eight Years.
Life was certainly a much more peaceable thing in the Whittaker household while Florence was undergoing the process of being “stroked down” by Mrs Warren at Ashcroft, Ethel and Sybil were much less perverse and saucy without her, and went their several ways like rational girls, Ethel looking forward to a clerkship in the post-office, and Sybil to an apprenticeship to a good dressmaker in Rapley. They contrived to walk about without staring or being stared at, and as they behaved with ordinary common sense, the respectability of their superior home showed, and they were thought well of by their various teachers, and began to take the lead at their Sunday school in better things than mischief. Miss Mordaunt found her Bible class comparatively harmless, and could not honestly feel that she regretted Florence Whittaker; while, at home, Mattie enjoyed unwonted peace and quiet.
She knew that she had not managed Florrie very well, but the relief of feeling no longer responsible for her was great. After a longish interval, Florence had replied to the letter in which she had urged her to keep in mind the lesson of Harry’s misconduct.
The girl could write rather a good letter, and her descriptions of her life at Ashcroft were amusing. “I should like it very well if there was anything but trees and live stock about,” she said, “but I get on right enough. Aunt Charlotte ain’t made up her mind that I’m going to ‘harry her up,’ as Aunt Stroud calls it. As for Harry, I remember him well enough, and there’s others that haven’t forgotten him neither, and maybe I’m taking example more than you think.”
Mattie could make nothing of this sentence, but it recalled Harry to her mind; and one evening, when George had come back from his work, she began to talk about him.
“It seems a bit heartless of us, George,” she said, “to think so little about him. He might be in trouble and poverty, and we so comfortable.”
“I expect we should have heard of him if he had been,” said George. “Of course, if he turned up, I should do the right thing by him—after proper inquiries. But I don’t suppose we should be much the better for him.”
“I wonder if father ever frets after him,” said Mattie.
“I don’t think he does,” said George dryly; “he put him out of the way too much. But Aunt Stroud made a pet of him.”
“I wish Aunt Lizzie wouldn’t talk so mysterious!” said Mattie impatiently. “She came down here to-day and talked about bursting clouds and Providence, till one would have thought she knew something particular.”
“She’s a talker, worse than Florrie,” said George. “I declare I’ll be off, Mattie—if there isn’t Aunt Stroud again!”
George was a worthy and useful young man, and if trouble or poverty had come upon his sisters he would have done his part by them well. But he liked his life very well as it was, and he naturally thought that the scapegrace Harry, though he knew nothing of the jewel story, would come into it as a disturbing element. Even Mattie, who was much more tender-hearted, felt afraid of the idea of him, and would have welcomed him from duty rather than from love. The father, too, was a good, conscientious, but rather selfish man, whose life consisted in the routine of his duties. He had been much more comfortable without Harry than with him. People cannot vanish for years, leaving trouble behind them, and always find a spontaneous welcome on their return. Neither Alwyn Cunningham nor Harry Whittaker had left to them in the world the one friend who would never have forgotten them. Their mothers were dead. Their places were filled up. Had poor Edgar been the gay young officer that Alwyn had pictured him, the place his brother held in his memory would probably have been much smaller, and when Harry Whittaker walked down the broad road in the middle of the cemetery, no dream had given notice of his return, nobody had any special desire to see him.
And for himself, he had come home more for the sake of his child than for that of his family. He recalled them all with an effort, even as he walked along counting the new tomb-stones that had appeared since he went away. His Aunt Stroud had arranged to come to the Lodge a few minutes before him, so as to prepare his family for his arrival. Suddenly, however, he perceived his father walking towards him by a side path, with his order-book under his arm, on his way from a meeting of the Board. A little greyer-haired, elderly middle-aged instead of young middle-aged, but far less altered than Harry himself, at whom he looked without any recognition. Harry had to choose between letting him pass and making himself known; but, before he could resolve what to say, some agitation in his manner, a look that was not that of the ordinary passer-by in his face, arrested Mr Whittaker’s attention, and he paused and looked at him.
“I think I’m speaking to Mr Whittaker?” said Harry, in his strong outspoken voice, which nevertheless shook a little. Then he suddenly put out his hand.
“Father, do you know me? I’ve come back to ask your forgiveness and friendship, and to clear my character as to the past.”
“My son Henry!” exclaimed Mr Whittaker. He faced him with a look of great surprise and of uncertain welcome, and yet, perhaps, he had often enough wondered whether Henry would come back, not to feel the utter strangeness of an event never looked forward to.
“It’s your place to explain a little, Henry,” he said, neither giving nor withholding a welcome.
“If you are willing to hear me,” said Harry.
“Come with me,” said Mr Whittaker.
He turned and led the way into the little office where business was transacted, and where the relatives and friends sometimes waited for funerals. In this not very cheerful spot Harry’s papers and letters (including one from Mrs Warren) were once more produced, and, under promise of secrecy for the present, he told his father of the search for the jewels, and how he would willingly have held back till they were found, but for his encounter with Florence.
“And,” said Harry, “after what passed I was justified, I think, in holding aloof, while I was a vagabond and times were so hard. And after I settled down comfortable and got on, thanks to Mr Alwyn’s kindness, I’d made up my mind to forget the old country; but you see, father, I thought, what if little Georgie, when he grows up, were to keep away from me for eight years, and live happy? Why, let us have quarrelled as we would, it’d break my heart to think he could forget me so. And so—and so, father—I hope you’ll let me take him his grandfather’s blessing. Mother would have set great store by him if she’d lived to see him, and he shall be taught to set store by you.”
The father and son sat looking at each other for a moment or two in silence. For the big, half-grown, trouble-town of a boy the father could not say that his heart had broken; but the thought of the little grandchild brought back early days, when Harry’s rosy face and sandy curls had been the mother’s pride, and when his father’s heart would have nearly broken if he had died in that scarlet fever from which he had barely recovered. Perhaps he had been too ready to think ill of the lad, and to cast him upon his own resources.
“If you were wronged about the jewels, Henry,” he said, “it’s you that have the advantage of us.”
“I’d acted so as to be easy wronged,” said Harry, “but I’d be glad to go back with all fair behind me.”
Mr Whittaker put out his hand with something like tears in his shrewd grey eyes. After all, he had not quite forgotten Harry. Harry gave the hand a great squeeze and walked over to the window, from which he presently turned round, saying:
“There’s my aunt, father; she was coming to tell you.”
Mr Whittaker went out to the door and beckoned Harry after him. There stood Mrs Stroud, beaming; Mattie, flushed and eager; George by no means so well pleased; and all the four younger ones eager and excited.
Harry’s coolness returned as soon as he had settled matters with his father, and he greeted them all as composedly as if he had returned from a short excursion abroad, and presently they all went in to sit down to supper and take each other’s measure as well as they could.
Mrs Stroud at once called for the photograph and Ethel and Sybil giggled with delight at finding themselves possessed of a nephew, while Mattie began to think that some of the romance she was so fond of had found its way into real life.
“And how long do you mean to stay this side of the water, Harry?” asked his aunt.
“Only till the matter of which I spoke to my father is concluded or given up. Mr Alwyn and myself could not both be away for long together, and I think he will not leave his brother again so quickly. Alberta would be very glad to make your acquaintances. Will you come back with me and pay us a visit, Mattie?”
“No, Henery,” said Mrs Stroud; “if Mattie knows which side her bread’s buttered she’ll stay on this side of the ocean. But if you want to do a brother’s part by your own family, you’ll take Florrie off their hands. For there’s no room for that girl—not in the High Street of Rapley. Perhaps there might be in Ameriky.”
“Aunt Eliza!” said Mattie indignantly, “Harry only meant so as to make acquaintance.”
“Well, well,” said Harry, “we’ll talk it all over. But Florence did her best to get me out of a scrape—”
“Which I make no doubt she got you into,” said Mrs Stroud.
Harry’s eyes twinkled a little, but he did not betray Florence, and the suggestion dropped into his mind. He would be glad to do something for one member of his family, and he rather inclined to the unpopular Florence, though, of course, he remembered Mattie much better, and felt pleased when at last she shyly came up to him and said that she was glad he had come home. But it was all uncomfortable and full of effort, and Harry felt glad when the time came to say “Good night,” and he went off to catch the last train for London. But, as he walked along at full speed to the station, the feeling of his father’s hand-shake lingered on his palm, and he felt that he could think of his child with peace and satisfaction.