CHAPTER VII
HERO AND HEROINES
'For though she meant to be brave and good,
When he played a hero's part,
Yet often the thought of the leg of wood
Hung heavy on her heart.'—A.
ell, Christmas time, like all good things, had to come to an end, and so did the captain's stay at Oakfield. The village seemed very dull for a while after he went. Nancy cried bitterly when she said good-bye to him, and indeed so did Patty, and I fancy Betty shed a few tears in Miss Jane's arbour, she ran away there in such a hurry after watching the captain start, and came back with such red rings round her eyes. Good-bye is a hard word at any time, and harder still in war time, when it is overshadowed by that unspoken dread lest no future greeting should come in which the parting may be forgotten. As for Godfrey, when the captain was gone he went over to the Place and sat down in the kitchen by the side of Kiah. Kiah would miss the captain more than any one, but the worst part of the going to him was that he was not going too.
'You and me, young master,' he said to Godfrey, as the child sat on a low stool looking up at him, 'our orders is to bide in port. Only you're fitting for a cruise, you see, sir, and I'm just a hulk that'll never be seaworthy again. It don't become us to be asking questions about our orders, we'd better just get to work and do what we can, so I'll be off and chop a bit of firewood for Martha.'
'And I'll go home and learn my spelling,' said Godfrey.
And, indeed, he was back in the parlour and at work before Betty came to look for him, on which she gave herself one of her indignant scoldings, telling herself that Godfrey was ten times more fit to be her bachelor uncle than she was to be his maiden aunt.
And so the little household at the cottage went back to the quiet life in which Christmas had made such a pleasant break. Angel and Betty read French and history together, and helped Penny in the kitchen, and taught Godfrey, and walked with him, and mended for him and built castles in the air for him when he was in bed and asleep; and Godfrey learnt his lessons and played with Nancy, and spent all the time he could with Kiah, and in the twilight sat crushed up between his aunts in the great arm-chair and talked about what he would do when he was big and a sailor. Cousin Crayshaw came down every other Saturday and stayed till Monday, and Betty asked herself, as she watched him reading his paper in the evening, whether he could be indeed the same Cousin Crayshaw who had climbed over the school gate, and had danced 'hands across and back again' with Patty for his partner. But, though Cousin Crayshaw did not tell school stories or indulge in country dances at the cottage, still the remembrance of that evening was a link between himself and his young cousins which none of them could forget. The girls did not seem to respect him less because they were less afraid of him and because they ventured to talk about their own pleasures and interests in his presence, and indeed now and then he would ask questions himself, would even call Godfrey to him and want to know about his lessons and how he managed to amuse himself. And as the days got longer the three would coax him into the garden to look at their flowers coming up, and one day Betty boldly offered him an auricula for his button-hole. And though he seemed a little doubtful at first as to whether such an ornament would become a grave and sober person like himself, yet he let her put it in for him, and after that there was never a Sunday that some flower did not appear on his plate at breakfast, placed there by each of the three in turn. One evening, while he was reading the paper, he looked up to see Angel standing by his chair.
'Please, Cousin Crayshaw,' she said, with the colour coming into her cheeks, 'might I read to you for a little while, if you think I could read well enough?'
'It wouldn't interest you, Angelica,' said her cousin in surprise.
'Oh yes, it would,' pleaded Angel, 'especially if—if you would explain about it to us a little. We think, Betty and Godfrey and I, that we know so dreadfully little about the affairs of the country, and every one ought to care about their country, oughtn't they? and we want to understand about the war, because, you see, we must care about our soldiers and sailors, and Captain Maitland is there, you know.'
And so Mr. Crayshaw, with a half-amused smile, let her try, and positively found Betty's eager questions very interesting, and really enjoyed explaining difficulties with Angelica's earnest eyes looking up at him, so that the little household at the cottage became quite politicians, and followed the army and the fleet on the map with the deepest interest. And Pete's prediction was fulfilled, for Captain Maitland actually found time to write Godfrey a most interesting letter, which lived in Godfrey's pocket and slept under his pillow at night, till it tore to pieces in the folds, after which Angel mended it with paste, and it was locked into a box upstairs of which Godfrey kept the key, lest thieves should get into the house and steal it. They were stirring times, those first years of our nineteenth century, when the news from abroad was of fierce struggles by land and sea, when the talk by the fireside and in the village streets was of an invasion that might be, when Englishmen would have to stand shoulder to shoulder, and fight on their own thresholds for country and home. All these things, the battles and the sieges, the plans and counter-plans, the great names of men who helped to change the fate of Europe, we read in our history books.
The shadow of the war, the anxiety about the present and fear about the future, must have hung like a cloud over our country in those years, and yet, notwithstanding, life went on quietly in the homes which the great danger was threatening, and people worked and played and laughed, and cared more on the whole about their own small affairs than about the big affairs of Europe. And so, though those years when England's enemies were watching her across the narrow seas, and wise men were planning and brave men fighting for her liberties, are so interesting in the history books, there is not very much to tell about the good folks at Oakfield. In those days, when no one had begun to think about railways, country people left home very little, and the changes of the seasons, sowing and reaping, hay-time and harvest, made the chief events of their lives; and though it seemed very important to Oakfield, it wouldn't be very interesting to any one else to hear of the wonderful apple crop in the orchard at the Place, or of how the miller's pony strayed away on the common and was lost for two days, or of how Godfrey and Nancy missed their way when out blackberrying, and came home after dark to find the aunts half distracted and Rogers and Pete searching, all over the country.
'The slow, sweet hours that bring us all things good.'
Those words always seem to me to describe the quiet years when nothing particular happens, when we are growing and learning almost without knowing it, getting, as Captain Maitland had said, something to steer by in harder, busier days to come. Godfrey, when he looked back afterwards, couldn't remember any very big events in his Oakfield life—just daily lessons and daily games, stories from Betty, twilight talks with Angel, hours spent by old Kiah's bench at the Place—and yet those 'slow sweet hours,' more than the stirring days afterwards, were to influence his whole life and make a man of him.
How surprised his young aunts would have been if any one had told them on the day when their nephew first came to Oakfield that it would be Angel who would suggest to Cousin Crayshaw that it was time for him to leave them. Mr. Crayshaw found her standing by his chair one Sunday evening when he awoke from a little doze in which he had been indulging after supper.
'Cousin Crayshaw,' she began hesitatingly, 'have you thought lately what a big boy Godfrey is getting?'
'Big? Yes, yes, of course, very big,' said Mr. Crayshaw in surprise. 'What's the matter, Angelica? Why shouldn't he grow? He looks strong enough, I'm sure.'
'Oh, he's as strong as a little pony,' said Angel proudly; 'but, Cousin Crayshaw, don't you think he's getting rather big for us to teach?'
'Is he troublesome?' asked Mr. Crayshaw doubtfully.
'Oh no, no! Only Betty and I think he is getting old enough to be taught by a man.'
'Humph! That means school, I suppose,' said Mr. Crayshaw, 'or could we find him a tutor?'
'I think—at least, don't you think it ought to be school?' said Angel hesitatingly. 'I mean, if he is going to sea, oughtn't he to knock about with other boys a little first?'
Her cousin looked up thoughtfully at her.
'You'll miss him a good deal, won't you, my dear?' he said.
'Oh, it doesn't do to think about that,' said Angelica cheerfully.
'And you know, Cousin Crayshaw,' said Betty from her corner, 'you said when first we had him that we weren't to spoil him.'
'No, no, of course not, of course not,' said Cousin Crayshaw heartily; 'I'll inquire about a school.'
There was a little mischievous twinkle in Betty's eyes as she bent over her book, and when she and Angel were alone that night she threw her arms round her sister and burst out laughing. 'Oh, Angel, Angel, isn't it funny,' she cried, 'to think of you having to make Cousin Crayshaw send Godfrey to school?'
'I believe he is almost as loth to lose him as we are,' said Angel; 'don't you love him for it?'
'Yes, that I do; and do you remember how you wouldn't let me make Godfrey hate him? Angel dear, I'm just wondering how soon I and Godfrey and Penny and this house altogether would go to rack and ruin without you.'
And so Godfrey went to school.
It certainly was hard work letting him go, and Penny wore the same face all day as she had done when Angel had whipped him for disobedience, and evidently thought everybody very hard-hearted. And the house did seem fearfully empty and silent, especially in the first twilight hour, when Angel and Betty sat together in the big chair where there had always been room for a third.
Cousin Crayshaw arrived quite unexpectedly in the middle of the week, and gave no explanation whatever of his coming, except that he had brought Angelica a new book of poems; and how did he come to know Angel liked poetry, for he never read it himself? And better than the unexpected visit, almost better than the book, which Betty read till a dreadful hour that night, was Mr. Crayshaw's sudden exclamation,
'Dear me, how one does miss that boy!'
He was nearly strangled the next moment by Betty's arms thrown round his neck, and though he said,
'Elizabeth! Dear, dear, don't throttle me,' he did not seem angry.
Godfrey was just the sort of boy to get on well at school, and he was soon popular both with boys and masters. In after years there was a packet, put away among Angelica's more cherished possessions, and ticketed, 'Letters written from school by my nephew Godfrey,' and I think even the famous letter from the captain was not more read and re-read. There was one in particular which, I believe, had some tears dropped over it, though it was never shown to Martha and Penny as some of the others were.
'My dear Aunt Angel,' it ran, 'I have had a fight. The boy I fought was bigger than me. He gave me a black eye, but I gave him two. He said something about you and aunt Betty, but he never will again. Jones, who is the head of the school, says I am a good plucked one. He put some raw meat on my eye for me. I thought you might find it useful to know about it; it is the very best thing when anyone's knocked you about, only be sure you put it on at once. I send a kiss to Aunt Betty and one to Penny, and my love to Martha and Pete and Nancy and Kiah and Cousin Crayshaw.
'Your affectionate nephew,
'GODFREY WYNDHAM.'
'It's like the champions in the days of chivalry,' said Betty, with shining eyes, 'only instead of a beautiful ladye-love, the darling's been fighting and getting wounded just for his two maiden aunts. Angel, I believe that Jones is a dear boy. I should like to send a little cake for him when we send Godfrey one. Angel, do you—do you think it's our duty to scold Godfrey for fighting?'
'I'm not sure,' said Angel slowly; and then she added, for once as decidedly as her sister, 'but I'm sure I'm not going to.'
I expect a diary of the lives of Angelica and Betty for the next year or two would have run something in this way:
'Godfrey came home. Heard from Godfrey. Godfrey writes that the cricket season has begun. Godfrey brought home a prize. Godfrey went back to school' (this last with a very black mark against it). But such a diary, though it was deeply interesting to the two young aunts themselves, wouldn't make much of a story to those who didn't mark time by Godfrey's holidays, and so we must just take a leap over several of these uneventful years and come suddenly to the day which all the time had stood in Angel's mind as a sort of background to everything else that happened, the day which she had taught herself to think about, and which she prayed every day of her quiet life that she might be strong and brave to meet.
It was an autumn day, misty and still, like that on which Godfrey had first come to Oakfield, and Cousin Crayshaw came down in the middle of the week. It was late afternoon, and Angel was catching the last light from the window on her sewing; and when she raised her head at the sound of wheels, and saw her cousin get out of his chaise, she knew in one moment that the day she had been preparing for had come. She put her work down with very trembling hands, and went down the path to meet Mr. Crayshaw, knowing quite well what he had to say to her while he made little nervous remarks about the weather, until at last he took a paper out of his pocket and gave it her to read, watching her anxiously all the while. The writing seem to grow dim and uncertain before Angel's eyes, but she knew what it was—the order for Mr. Godfrey Wyndham to join the frigate Mermaid, Captain Maitland, ordered to the Channel, there to do the service of a midshipman. Angel's voice sounded to herself rather strange and far-away as she asked:
'When does the Mermaid sail?'
'In four days. Captain Maitland is in London; he'll be here to-morrow. I have sent for Godfrey. But dear me, dear me, Angelica, he seems very young, very young!'
And Angel said, in the same quiet tones, that Godfrey was nearly fourteen, and how fortunate it was for him to have the chance of being under Captain Maitland; they would be so happy to think of him on board the Mermaid. And when she went to find Betty, Mr. Crayshaw took off his spectacles and wiped them and remarked, as he had done on that past Christmas Day:
'Angelica is a good girl, a very good girl!'
After that there was no time at all for thinking. Angel said afterwards that her head seemed to be quite full of nothing but Godfrey's shirts, and a very good thing it was for all of them. Only while she stitched and sorted and packed, she had all the time a feeling that she ought to be saying something to Godfrey now, before he went out into the great terrible world of which she knew so little, something that would help him and strengthen him in the days to come. But there never came a minute for saying it until the very last evening, when Godfrey's box was packed, and his last visits paid in the village, where the old women cried over him in his uniform. The captain had gone for a walk with Mr. Crayshaw, Penny was getting supper ready, and Angel and Betty and Godfrey found themselves together in the garden, really with nothing more to do.
It was the twilight hour, which the two young aunts had always given up to Godfrey. Betty used to look grave about it in the old days, and say she was afraid it was very idle; but she always gave in, and joined Angel and Godfrey when they paced up and down the garden walk, or sat in Miss Jane's arbour, or watched the stars come out from the parlour window, or squeezed into the big arm-chair before the fire. They were in the garden this evening, for it was mild and still, with autumn scents in the air and stars coming out behind a misty haze. And now surely was the time for the last words, the tender advice and warnings that were to go with Godfrey out into the world. But somehow Angel and Betty never spoke them after all. Instead they talked about the past; of Godfrey's first coming to Oakfield—'horrid little wretch that I was,' said the nephew—with the curly head, which had only reached Angel's elbow then, rubbing fondly against her shoulder; of Kiah's coming home, and the captain's first visit, and that Christmas party at the Place.
'And do you remember,' Godfrey said, 'that first day I settled to be a sailor?'
'The Sunday afternoon when we saw Kiah? Yes, of course I do, Godfrey. I never dreamed when we went up to the Place that day what it would put into your head.'
'It wasn't only going to the Place,' said Godfrey thoughtfully; 'I don't know whether I should have settled like that if you hadn't said that to me before.'
'Said what, Godfrey? I don't remember.'
'Don't you, Aunt Angel? I do, every word; about being useful and making the world a bit better. I knew then I'd got to do it, and it was only to settle how; and when I heard about Kiah and the captain, I thought it seemed the nicest way, and I knew it would please you. And it does, doesn't it? That's the best part of going, knowing you're glad for me to go.'
Angelica's hand met Betty's in the dusk and held it tight, and for once it was she who answered for them both:
'Yes, Godfrey dear, very glad and very proud.'
'I told the captain so yesterday,' Godfrey went on; 'and he said I'd better make up my mind directly to be a hero, for I came of an heroic family. That was what he said, and I sha'n't forget. There's the captain and Cousin Crayshaw.'
'Yes, go and meet them,' Angel said, for Betty's hand was trembling in her own and she could hear the catch in her breath that meant she was strangling her tears. She slipped her hand out of Godfrey's arm and let him go forward, while she and Betty drew back through the gap in the yew hedge to Miss Jane's arbour, just where Betty had flung herself down in despair on that first day of Godfrey's coming to Oakfield. They were almost the same words that she gasped out now on Angel's shoulder, as they sat down on the bench side by side; for Betty, though she was nineteen now and wore her hair in a knot at the top of her head, and considered herself a rather elderly person, was much the same vehement little lady as the Betty we knew at thirteen.
'I can't do it,' she sobbed, 'I can't, it's no use; I'm not the right person to be—to be a hero's aunt. I don't want him to go, I shall die if he gets killed; I sha'n't be proud, I shall only be miserable; what am I to do?'
Angel's arms tightened their clasp, she bent her head low over Betty's fair hair and tried to speak once or twice in vain. Then she said at last:
'Dear, we must just say what we said the first day he came. We want to love him, not our own pleasure in him; we haven't loved him and prayed about him and tried to teach him just for ourselves.'
'Oh, I don't know,' faltered Betty; 'I'm afraid I'm selfish, I'm not brave like you. I thought I should feel like the Spartan mothers, but I don't. I can't think of the country. I can only think of Godfrey.'
'Oh, Betty dear, I'm not brave—I never was. I don't feel a bit like a Spartan mother; but it seems to me we needn't mind about what we feel like. We've only got to try and look brave and help poor Cousin Crayshaw, for he is dreadfully sad, and make it easy for Godfrey to go, and not let him think we're fretting.'
'But if we can't?' sighed Betty.
'Do you remember what Martha said the first day?—"We never have a job given us that's too hard for us to do." What do you think, Betty dear, ought we to go in now?'
As they came through the gap in the hedge they nearly ran into the captain in the dusk. He half hesitated, as if unwilling to speak, and then wished them good-night.
'Oh, but you're coming to supper, Captain Maitland,' said Betty. 'Cousin Crayshaw and all of us expected you.'
'I think I must say good-night, Miss Betty,' the captain said a little hesitatingly; 'I—I shall have a good deal to do this evening.'
'Oh, but I know your packing doesn't take long,' said Betty eagerly; 'please do come.'
They both guessed that he was going home to a lonely evening because he would not intrude upon their last night with Godfrey, and they couldn't let him do that.
'I know Cousin Crayshaw expects you,' urged Angel, 'and Godfrey will be so pleased too.'
And Betty, growing bold in the darkness, added earnestly: 'And if you are thinking about Angel and me, it makes it easier for us to pretend to be brave, though we aren't in the least, when you are there.'
The captain did not answer for a minute, and when he did his voice had a strange tremor in it.
'You know,' he said, 'that anything that I can do for you or for Godfrey, anything that is in my power, it will be my greatest happiness to do. I have wanted to say this before Godfrey and I sailed together, and I know you will understand, and not overrate my power to help him and care for him.'
The next minute he had a hand of each of the girls.
'We know you love him almost as much as we do,' said Betty's eager voice.
'And it is our greatest comfort in the world just now to think that he will be with you,' added Angel's gentle tones.'
'And you'll come to supper and help us, won't you?' urged Betty. And so the captain came, and what a help he was! How he seemed to know just when to be silent, and when it would help them all most for him to talk! And though he didn't often talk about his own doings, he told them this evening a good deal about his last cruise, when he had been to the West Indies, where Godfrey was born. And he tried to find out how much Godfrey remembered of the country, and spoke of how English people always draw together in a foreign land, and are kind and friendly to every stranger who speaks their own tongue. There was one man in particular, he said, an Englishman, a successful planter, who had come forward to help him when he was ordered off in a hurry, and was in trouble about one of his midshipmen who was down with the fever.
'He came and took him off my hands,' the captain said, 'and had him into his own house; a man I never set eyes on before, and I don't even so much as know his name. He asked it as a favour, saying he'd no child of his own, nor any kith and kin who cared enough for him to want his help.'
'Poor man! I daresay he was glad enough,' said Angel; while Betty echoed:
'Poor man, fancy having no one belonging to him!'
For it would be better, she thought, to break one's heart over such a parting as was to come next day, than to have no one in the world from whom parting would be pain. And really the thought of that lonely Englishman in the far-away island helped her a little over letting Godfrey go.
It was strange that when he really was gone the most restless person in Oakfield was Kiah, who all those years had been so busy and contented at the Place. He took to hobbling up and down the garden path instead of sitting on his bench or by the fire, leaning over the gate and scanning the country, as if he were watching for the French to come, and presenting himself daily at the cottage to know if they had any news of the young master.
And at last, about a month after the Mermaid had sailed, he came one day in his best clothes and with a bundle in his hand, looking more cheery than he had done since Godfrey left.
'Yes, young ladies,' he said, as Angel and Betty asked wonderingly where he was going, 'I'm off down South for a bit of a visit. I bean't tired of Oakfield, nor I don't look for no home but here among my folks, but it's come over me as I must have a blow o' the sea and a sight of a ship again, and Timothy Blake, that was an old messmate o' mine, I give him my word I'd see him one o' these days, and I've a many friends beside him on the Devon coast. And then you see, young ladies, I might be getting a sight o' the Mermaid.'
'O Kiah!' gasped Betty, as if she longed to ask him to take her too.
'But are you going alone, Kiah?' asked Angel.
'Trust an old salt to take care of himself, Miss Angel. Ay, and if Boney ever gets ashore down there, which ain't likely, but just might be, I'd like to be near about, so I would, for I haven't forgotten how to fire a gun; a hand and a half's good enough for that.'
'And what does Martha say?' asked Betty.
Kiah chuckled.
'She's a wise one, is our Martha. She says she always knew I was a bit of a rolling stone, and my chair'll just be waiting against I come in again.'
And so the little Oakfield world had a fresh, interest in the great world's doings, and Nancy, at any rate, felt that they might all laugh at the notion of a French invasion, with the captain and Mr. Godfrey in the Channel, and Uncle Kiah keeping guard on shore.
