CHAPTER IX
IN PORT
'If conquering and unhurt I came
Back from the battle-field,
It is because thy prayers have been
My safeguard and my shield.'—A. A. PROCTER.
nd meanwhile how had it been at Oakfield, little Oakfield, which had its share in the joys and sorrows of those stirring times? Angel and Betty could hardly remember afterwards exactly how they heard the news; it seemed to be all over the place directly, and no one could have said who actually told it. But it was Mr. Crayshaw who brought it—poor Mr. Crayshaw, so aged and altered and broken-down that to care for him and comfort him seemed the first thing his two young cousins had to do and to think of. And indeed with Angel it was so much more natural to think of other people first that she seemed to feel Godfrey's loss chiefly in the way in which it would affect them all—Cousin Crayshaw, who had had to meet the first shock of the news; poor old Penny; Nancy, who had been his playfellow; Betty above all, who had said she could never bear it if Godfrey died for his country. Poor Betty made such desperate efforts to be brave and unselfish, choked back her tears so manfully, faltered such bold words about their boy having died as he would have wished for King and Country. And then she would run away and sob passionately over Godfrey's toy boats, the lesson-books he had used with her, the bed he had slept in, and then would tell herself she was not worthy of him, and come back to be brave and self-controlled before the others once more. While Angel, for her part, hardly expected to be ever worthy of her boy, only went her quiet way, cried bitterly on Martha's shoulder, sat on a stool at Cousin Crayshaw's feet as if she were a little girl again, and did the work which Penny forgot, and found comfort somehow from them all. Angel could not be Betty, and Betty could not be Angel, no two people meet joy and sorrow and do their brave, unselfish deeds in just the same way; and the beautiful part is that there is room on the great list of honour for the Betties who school themselves to courage, and the Angels who are simply brave in their self-forgetfulness, and the world is the better for them both.
It was three days after the news had come—Angel and Betty unconsciously counted the time like that now, looking back to the days when they didn't know that Godfrey was dead as to something beautiful and far away.
Angel was in the garden, sitting with her work in Miss Jane's arbour. There was so much work to be done, and poor old Penny cried so bitterly over the black stuff that her damp needle and thread didn't get on very fast, and Angel took it quietly away from her and carried it out of doors. Penny had a sort of idea that there was something wrong in sewing at mourning dresses in the garden, but Angel thought it didn't matter. Betty felt as if the glory of the spring-time, the flowers in the borders and the birds' song and the vivid green of the meadows, were like a mockery of their grief, but to Angel the sunny sweetness brought a strange comfort which she did not try to understand. Martha had promised to come round and help her, but it was afternoon now and she had not come. She was very busy at home, Angel supposed, but still it was not like her not to keep an appointment when she had said she would come. Betty sat on the grass at her sister's feet. She had her work, too, but it did not get on very fast. She laid it down at last and leaned back against the stone shoulder of Demoiselle Jehanne, much as she had been used to do in the days when she was a little girl and used to come to her for comfort. There was something about the peacefulness of the still figure under the flowers which soothed Betty still, she hardly knew how. She remembered, almost with a smile, how Godfrey had always believed that Miss Jane's heart was broken by a naughty nephew, and he had been so afraid of the same thing happening to her and Angel. She had almost come to believe in the story herself, and as her fingers strayed half caressingly over the familiar broken face she wondered how Miss Jane felt when she was a living, loving, sorrowing woman here at Oakfield. Did she know about the dreary blank, the aching longing which had come to the little girls who used to play beside her? And a hundred years hence would it matter as little to any one that Godfrey lay under the tossing Channel waters as it did to-day that a sad woman's heart had broken long ago? A timid step on the path made them look up, and there stood Nancy, waiting with much less assurance than usual for them to notice her. Angel held out her hand.
'Well, Nancy dear,' she said, 'where is your mother?'
Nancy for answer began to cry.
'O Miss Angel, you won't be angry, will you?' she sobbed; 'Patty said I mustn't come, but I couldn't help it, miss.'
'We like you to come, dear,' Angel began gently; but Nancy went on between her sobs:
'It's him—the captain—he's come home, Miss Angel.'
'The captain! When did he come?' cried both the sisters together.
'Last night,' said Nancy, wiping her eyes; 'and, Miss Angel, he's not like the captain a bit now; he looks quite, quite old, and Pete and father they a'most carried him in from the chaise; and do you know, he can't see, he won't be able to see for ever so long, perhaps never. And they told me not to tell you because it'd make you sadder. And this morning he asked me about you, and I said, should I fetch you, and he said, "No, no, you wouldn't want to see him"; but somehow I couldn't help it, and I've come, and, Miss Angel, I'm sure if you saw him you wouldn't be angry with him.'
'Angry!' said Angel, laying her heap of black work down on the arbour seat, 'angry with just the one person we want to see, Godfrey's best friend, the last person who saw him! You were quite, quite right to come, Nancy dear. Betty, will you——'
'Come this minute? Of course I will,' said Betty, rising in her old impulsive way. 'Cousin Crayshaw's out, but we can't wait for him, can we, Angel?'
'No, I don't think we can,' said Angel; and in a few minutes the two were walking down the road to the Place, with Nancy, crying still but half-triumphant, between them.
And on the bench outside the house, in Kiah's old place, where Godfrey had first settled to be a sailor, Captain Maitland sat, all alone and not feeling the spring sunshine which fell about him. He hardly knew why he had chosen that place, only just to-day he felt as if, as Nancy said, he had grown old like Kiah, only with none of Kiah's cheery content. His eyes were bandaged from the happy light, but he knew just how it all looked, and he said to himself that it was only he who had changed, not the beautiful, happy world; for he had loved the sunshine, this merry-hearted sailor, and the joy and the beauty of the fair earth, and the stir and the work and bustle of life, and he felt as if it were not himself but some other man who sat here in the darkness at the door of his old home, and as if all his hopeful courage were gone and would never come back. The doctors had told him that he would recover his sight with time and patience; but just now he felt as if he couldn't look forward, only back to that moment which would be before him all his life, the moment when the French brig went down, and he saw his youngest midshipman jump headlong over the side of the Mermaid, and knew that his pursuit of the other ship must not be stayed for the sake of one life, and so went on his way, with Angel's white face before his eyes and the sound of Betty's voice in his ears. It was only a few minutes before the shot came which stretched him, blinded and unconscious, on the deck, but they were the sort of minutes in which a man grows old; and when he came to himself, helpless and weak and bewildered, to be told that Godfrey Wyndham had never been seen since the fight, he felt as if the time before were part of another life.
He was wondering sadly this morning why he had hurried home before the doctors wished him to travel; he had been restlessly anxious to get to Oakfield, and now he scarcely knew why. How could he meet Angelica and Betty, when he had come back safe, only useless and helpless, and the boy they had trusted to him, the boy who was the light of their eyes and the joy of their hearts, would never come back to them any more?
And then suddenly a voice sounded close to him; he had been too much taken up with his own thoughts to hear the steps on the path till they were beside him.
'Oh! Captain Maitland'—it was Betty's eager tones—'it is dreadful to see you like this; but you'll be able to see again soon, won't you?'
The captain rose to his feet and stood trembling as he had never trembled before the French guns. And even in the darkness he knew that it was Angel's hand that touched him.
'Please sit down,' she said gently, 'please don't stand. Why did you not let us know? Nancy had to fetch us.'
'How could I?' he said, turning away his face from her, 'how could I, when I would give all the world to be where he is and he here?'
'Oh, we know,' said Betty's earnest voice, 'we both remember what you said, that we mustn't over-rate your power to save him. You don't think we're thinking anything like that, you surely know us better? Angel, Angel, can't you explain?'
'I'm sure Captain Maitland understands,' said Angel very quietly; 'and now he will tell us all about what we most want to hear, we and Cousin Crayshaw and Penny and all—what nobody else can tell us.'
And the captain said 'Yes' as he had said 'Yes' when Angel and Betty fetched him home to help them at supper on the evening before Godfrey went away.
They were all together at the Place that evening, after the captain's story had been told. In spite of the sunny days, the spring nights were chilly, and they gathered round the wood fire in a little panelled room which had been old Mrs. Maitland's sitting-room. It had been scarcely used since, and the lady's things—her favourite chair and her little work-table and her big basket—were still in their places as she had left them, waiting, Martha used to say, like the stores of linen, till the captain brought home his bride. It was Martha who had thought that the big room, which was so full of memories of that merry Christmas party, would seem cold and dreary, and had carried the lamp into the little parlour. And there round the fire they sat together, Betty at Mr. Crayshaw's feet, with his hand caressing her bright hair, and Angel on her low chair beside them, and the captain opposite, with his eyes shaded from the light. Only this evening he had been talking quite hopefully about the time when he would be fit for work again. And they talked about Godfrey too, Angel being the one to begin, and for once it was she who led the talk, and dwelt quite quietly and naturally on old days—on Godfrey's first coming home, and the day when he had first heard Kiah's stories and settled to be a useful sailor. And she spoke freely as she had never done before of hers and Betty's fears and misgivings about his education.
'Don't you remember that first day, Betty, how you said you could never be a maiden aunt? And afterwards, when we knew he was set on being a great sailor, I was more afraid still, for I couldn't think how I was ever to teach him.'
'And little enough help from those who should have been the first to help you,' sighed Mr. Crayshaw.
'Oh no, no—I didn't mean that. Only, you see, we had more to do with him than any one. But Martha was so good, she told us not to worry too much, only to do our best and trust about him. Do you know, I think if I had known then that he would die like this, such a brave, good little officer, I should have felt quite glad and thankful.'
'A gentleman wants to see Miss Wyndham,' said Patty at the door.
'Miss Wyndham cannot see any one to-night,' said Mr. Crayshaw, impatiently.
'Oh yes, I can,' said Angel rising, 'only I don't know who it can be. Where is he, Patty?'
'I showed him into the dining-room, Miss Angelica; he came on here from the cottage, he says.'
Angel went out of the room and across the hall to the dining-room; the front door was open, and across the still meadows the church bells were ringing, for the news of a victory in the Peninsula had reached the village that evening. Angel wondered as she listened if there were many in England who heard through the joyous peal the sound of a bell tolling for some one whose life or death meant more to them than victory or defeat.
'God help them all!' she whispered to herself, for she was one of those whose tender sympathy grows wider at the touch of their own sorrow.
The dining-room was almost dark. Patty had put a candle on the table, but its rays hardly reached the end of the room. The shutters were not closed, and outside it was starlight, as it had been on that Christmas night when she and Godfrey and the captain looked at the Plough shining over the homes of Oakfield. The strange visitor was standing by the table. He turned when Angel came in and gave a great start as he saw her standing there in the doorway, dressed as she had been when Godfrey saw her first, in a white gown with black ribbons, and with the chain round her neck on which she always wore the miniature of her brother. He did not speak, so she said:
'You wished to see me, sir?'
'Yes,' began the stranger hurriedly; 'you are Miss Wyndham, I am sure—Miss Angelica Wyndham. I came—I wished—I once knew some relatives of yours in the West Indies.'
'My brother,' said Angel, faltering a little. Was this a friend of Bernard's come to ask for Godfrey?—and Godfrey was gone.
'Your brother, yes; I knew him very well.'
'He was killed in a rising of the slaves nine years ago,' said Angelica.
'I know his death was reported,' said the stranger; 'there were many killed, and some—some who had marvellous escapes, and returned to find their friends dead, or believed to be dead, and themselves perhaps forgotten.' Something more in the tone than in the words thrilled Angel strangely. She began to tremble.
'Please tell me what you mean,' she said, and she tried to see her visitor's face, but his back was to the light and he stood in deep shadow.
'Some of those supposed to be lost came back,' he said, and his voice faltered too.
Angel put out her hand.
'You have something to tell me,' she said, leaning back against a high carved arm-chair.
The next moment his arm was supporting her, his voice, hoarse and broken, was in her ear.
'Angelica—Angel, do you not understand? Can you remember, can you forgive, do you think? I never guessed that you would care. I thought only to bring trouble if I came. Will you try and forgive me now?'
Angel stood half stunned for a minute leaning against his shoulder, and then suddenly the thought of what might have been swept over her, a bitterness of grief which she had never known before seemed to crush her down. She burst out into passionate crying, such tears as she had never shed.
'Oh, Bernard! Oh, Bernard!' she sobbed, 'we have not got him for you; if you had come—if you had come before—but he is not here any more.'
There was a sound of doors opening, of voices outside; the peal of the church bells rose and fell on the breeze. Angel felt herself drawn into her brother's arms. His voice sounded above her:
'Angel, don't cry so; look up, dear, listen—there are wonders on sea as well as on land; you must listen and hope, and——'
But at that moment there was a shriek in the hall—Betty's voice, and then a clamour of crying and laughing and questioning, a door burst open, a pair of arms round Angel's neck, a curly head against her cheek, and over all the triumphant tones of Kiah Parker's voice as he stumped with his wooden leg upon the floor.
'Don't you be afeard. Our young ladies ain't the sort as dies of joy, bless 'em, bless 'em all, every one of 'em!' and round the group he hobbled in a sort of Indian war-dance, till Nancy, who couldn't get into the circle and wanted to say something, called out between laughing and crying:
'Oh, Uncle Kiah, do mind the polished floor!'
And all the time the bells rang their cheery peal for what brave English hearts had done.
It was very early the next morning, when only the birds, who scarcely seem to sleep at all in springtime, and the busiest people in Oakfield were up, that Peter Rogers might have been seen setting a ladder against Sir Godfrey's oak-tree and preparing to go up it. Mr. Collins came to the inn door while he was doing it.
'Holloa! Pete, my man, and what may you be after?' he exclaimed.
'Just running a bit of a flag up on the old tree, Mr. Collins, with your good leave.'
Mr. Collins rubbed his hands with great satisfaction.
'And that's quite right to be sure, and very suitable to the occasion, Pete,' he said. 'Bless your heart, who ever looked to see this day when you went up that same tree to get Mr. Godfrey down; and a very near thing too, so it was?'
'To think of me ever having to help Mr. Godfrey down,' laughed Pete, as he lashed the flag-staff to the topmost bough; 'why, if one's to believe Uncle Kiah, he can a'most run up the mast with his eyes shut, and stand on his head on the top.'
'Oh, that's not nearly all he can do,' said Nancy, who was there, of course, steadying the ladder.
'Nance, is it true that your Uncle Kiah came home in a post chaise with the gentlemen?' asked one of the inn maids.
'Of course it is,' said Nancy, with her head inches higher than usual.
'And did King George really thank Master Godfrey himself for saving them French papers?'
'Of course,' said Nancy, promptly, 'or at least he sent somebody very grand to do it.'
'And did he and his papa really swim over from France with the letters in their mouths and the cannon-balls flying all over them?'
'I'll tell you all about it by-and-bye, I'm going to get eggs for the captain's breakfast,' said Nancy, who was as important as the Admiral of the Fleet; 'but you see if Mr. Godfrey doesn't have a ship of his own directly, and medals all over him.'
And at the top of Sir Godfrey's oak the English flag flew free and fair, as it flies amidst the storm of shot and shell, the roar of winds and the din of battle.
It was flying gaily when a party of three came past on their way from the cottage to the Place, Mr. Wyndham, with Betty on one side of him and Godfrey on the other. Betty pointed up into the tree. 'That's where the bough was, Bernard, just under the flag, where Godfrey sat that first day when he was a little naughty boy and I was a little stupid aunt.'
'And you did name me after the great Sir Godfrey, didn't you?' said the young sailor eagerly.
'I named you after the Sir Godfrey of the oak, with some sort of hope, I think, that you might stand under it one day. I'm afraid I didn't think of choosing you an illustrious namesake; I never knew that he did anything particular, except plant that acorn.'
'No more did I,' laughed Betty. 'Don't look horrified, Godfrey; you and I romanced about him so much that I came to think he was a great hero, just as I believed Miss Jane was a broken-hearted aunt.'
'He was my first hero,' Godfrey said, 'before Kiah and the captain came. I shall go on believing in him; he left something good behind him at all events. Do you remember how cross I was because you wouldn't let him sit under his own oak-tree? Oh, there's old Mrs. Ware, I must speak to her; don't wait, I'll catch you.'
He darted off, and the others went on slowly.
Presently Betty said:
'I have been thinking that sometimes people are allowed to sit under their own trees after all, to see the end of what they do. When I look at Godfrey, and think about how we planned for him, it seems so much, much more than I deserve; do you know what that feels like, Bernard?'
'Betty, when I think of you two, keeping the remembrance of a good-for-nothing brother all these years and training up for me such a son as this is, and set that against my deserts, I'm not sure how I could bear the shame of it if the thankfulness were not greater still.'
'Oh hush! you're not to talk like that any more, at any rate not to me. I never should have done anything by myself, it was Angel who settled first of all that we were to be good sisters. And then we thought that was over, and we had to begin to be maiden aunts, and Martha told us not to be afraid, for we never had a job set us without strength to do it. I've made lots of mistakes, I'm not a perfect maiden aunt even now, but Angel might have been born one. Bernard, why are you laughing? I expect you think me a dreadful rattle, but, indeed, I'm much older than I look. Here we are and here's Martha. Good morning, Martha, is the captain up?'
'Up! Why, Miss Betty, my dear, he's gone by the fields to the cottage this half-hour since.'
'All alone? Oh, Martha, that's very rash!' exclaimed Betty in her motherly way. 'Over the brook with no one to lead him! Suppose he missed his footing?'
'Oh, the captain's sight's a deal better this morning,' said Martha, with her broadest smile. 'I don't think he'll come to any harm, Miss Betty.'
'Well, we'll go after him,' Betty said, 'or we may meet him coming back; for I do think it's rash, Martha, I do indeed!'
But Martha only went on smiling as if she were not at all alarmed. So Betty and her brother, with Godfrey following them, went across the meadows by the foot-path to the cottage. And about half way they met the captain, walking erect and strong like his old self, and Angel beside him. And Betty, who had never thought much whether her sister were pretty or not, gave quite a start of surprise, for Angel looked so beautiful at that moment that she wondered why she had never noticed it before. And the captain looked quite radiantly happy, and altogether forgot to say good morning.
'We've been to look for you at the Place,' Betty said; 'and Martha told us you'd gone out all by yourself, and I rather scolded her for letting you; but really I don't think you look as if you wanted taking care of.'
'Don't you?' said the captain; and then he and Mr. Wyndham and Angel suddenly burst out laughing together, Angel with her fair face growing rosy red and the happiest light in her eyes. But the captain took hold of Betty's hand.
'You must try and forgive me, Miss Betty,' he said, 'but I want taking care of so much that I have found a guardian angel for myself who says she will take me in hand.'
And then Angel put her arms round her sister and whispered:
'Betty dear, you will be glad, won't you? And now you'll have two brothers instead of one.'
And Betty stood still a minute while this new wonder grew clear to her, and then threw one arm round Angel and held out the other hand to the captain, and exclaimed at the same moment:
'Oh, Angel, when I was just telling Bernard that you were born to be a maiden aunt!'
The worst of it was, as both Betty and Godfrey declared, that nobody would say they were surprised. Cousin Crayshaw looked as knowing as possible and called Betty 'Mrs. Blind Eyes'; Martha Rogers would do nothing but laugh and say she had made an extra stock of lavender bags last year, knowing Miss Angelica was partial to them. As for Kiah, he frankly declared that he had settled the match years ago.
'No, nor you mustn't take it presuming, Miss Betty,' he said as he sat on his bench, chopping away at a clothes-peg for Martha as if he had never been away, 'but one couldn't but be looking about for a good wife for the captain, and who should one pitch on but the young mistress, that's just built for an admiral's lady, so she is.'
'Oh, then the wedding's to wait for my promotion, Kiah?' said the captain.
'Not a bit of it, captain! Wedding first and cocked hat after, and, mark me, it'll come the quicker for it, asking your pardon, Miss Angel, and no offence meant.'
'Offence! no, I'm very much obliged to you, Kiah,' said Angelica, sitting down beside the old sailor; 'I was only afraid you would think I should spoil the captain for the service.'
'No fear of that, Miss Angel. Some says the best men in a fight must be them as have none at home to think for. They're all out, them folks are. A man serves King and country better for having the right sort o' women folks at home, and he'll go to work the stouter if he keeps his heart warm with a thought o' the mother and sisters behind him.'
'And the aunts, Kiah,' said Godfrey.
'Ay, to be sure, sir, the aunts.'
FINIS
