HORN HEAD.
(COUNTY OF DONEGAL.)
Sister of Earth, her sister eldest-born,
Huge world of waters, how unlike are ye!
Thy thoughts are not as her thoughts: unto thee
Her pastoral fancies are as things to scorn:
Thy heart is still with that old hoary morn
When on the formless deep, the procreant sea,
God moved alone: of that Infinity,
Thy portion then, thou art not wholly shorn.
Scant love hast thou for dells where every leaf
Boasts its own life, and every brook its song;
Thy massive floods down stream from reef to reef
With one wide pressure; thy worn cliffs along
The one insatiate Hunger moans and raves,
Hollowing its sunless crypts and sanguine caves.
Aubrey de Vere.
STRAY LEAVES FROM A PASSING LIFE.
CONCLUDED.
CHAPTER IV.
WE ALL MEET TO PART.
A second time I recovered. I was still in the same place, and the same hand was supporting me. Some brandy was forced down my throat, and it revived me.
“Now listen,” he said. “I have good news for you. Why, the man is going off again! Here, Roger, take another nip. So. Now you are much nearer being a dead man than your father, only you will not let me tell you quietly. Hush, now! Not a word, or I am dumb. You lie still and listen, and let me talk. Everything is well here. That is about as much information as you can bear at present. There is nothing the matter with anybody, except with yourself. Miss Herbert, in consequence of a lucky little telegram received this afternoon commissioned me to await your arrival here, and tell you just that much. Everything else was to be explained at the Grange, where your father and some friends are waiting to receive with open arms the returned prodigal. This much I may add: Your father has been ill, very ill. But he has recovered. Now, another nip and I think we may be moving. That was Sir Roger at whose feet you fell outside. The noble old veteran never moved a foot, or your brains might have been dashed out. He is a truer friend than I, Roger, for he knew you at once, pricked up his ears, bent down his head towards you, and gave a low whinny that told me the whole story in a second. I’ll be bound you have had nothing to eat all day. That is bad. Why, you are the sick man after all. Do you feel equal to moving now? Well, come: easy—in—hold this skin up to your chin—so! And now we are off. Mr. Roger Herbert, I wish you a very merry Christmas!”
I sat silent with that delicious sense of relief after a great danger averted while the shadow of that danger has not quite passed away. Kenneth did all the talking. The snowfall had ceased and the moon was up. How well I remembered every house we passed, as the cheery lights flashed out of the windows, and the sounds of merry voices, whose owners I could almost name, broke on my ear. Leighstone seemed fairy-land, which I had reached after long wanderings through stony deserts and over barren seas. There is the old Priory, rising dark and solemn out of the white snow, with the white gravestones standing mute at the head of white graves all around it. The moonlight falls full on the family tomb. I shuddered as I looked upon it, not yet quite assured that it is not open for another occupant. I can see the frozen figure of Sir Roger stiff and stark with his winter grave-clothes upon him as we roll by the Priory gates. And there, at last, are the gleaming windows of the Grange, and the faint feeling again steals over my heart.
The heavy snowfall deadens the sound of the wheels, and we are within the house before our arrival is known. Miss Herbert is called out quietly by a servant, a stranger to me. Dear hearts! What these women are! She does not cry out, she does not speak a word; watching and suffering had made her so wise. She clings to me, and weeps silently on my breast a long while, smothering even the sobs that threaten to break her heart. When at last we look around for Kenneth he is nowhere to be seen, but there is a strange hush over all the house, and the voices that I heard on my entrance are silent.
“Papa is alone in the study—waiting,” whispered Nellie. “I received your telegram. O Roger! that little scrap of paper was like a message from heaven. He is growing anxious, but expects you. Hush! follow me.”
She stole along on tiptoe, and I after her. The door of the study was ajar. She opened it softly, and, standing in the shadow, I peeped in. He was seated in an easy-chair and had dozed off. His face wore that gentle, languid air of one who has been very ill and is slowly recovering; of one who has looked death in the face and to whom life is still new and uncertain. Ten years seemed to have been added to his life. Whether owing to his illness or to some other cause, I could not tell, but it seemed to me that a certain look of firmness and resolve, that was at times too prominent, had quite disappeared. Instead of his own brown locks he wore a wig. He had suffered very much. The door creaked as Nellie entered, disturbing but not awakening him. He sighed, his lips moved, and I thought he muttered my name.
“Papa!” said Nellie, touching his arm lightly. How matronly the Fairy looked! “Papa!”
“Ah! Yes, my dear. Is that you, my child? Is—is nobody with you?” What a wistful look in the eyes at that last question!
“Do you feel any better, papa? It is time to take your medicine.” How slow the demure minx is about it.
“Is it? I don’t think I will take any now. I want nothing just now, my darling.”
“What—no medicine! Nothing at all, papa?”
“Nothing at all. Is not that train arrived yet?” he asked, looking around anxiously at the clock.
“I—I think so, papa. And it brought such a lot of visitors.”
“Any—any—for us, Nellie?” He coughed, and his voice trembled into a feeble old treble as he asked this question.
“Only one, papa. May he come in?”
He knew all in an instant. He rose and tottered towards the door, where he would have fallen had I not caught him in my arms. Only one word escaped him.
“Roger!”
After some time Kenneth stole in, and seeing how matters stood insisted on bearing me off to dinner. He took me into the parlor, which was blazing with lights and decorated with holly and red berries in good old Christmas fashion. The first object to meet my eyes was a great “Welcome Home” which flashed in letters of fragrant blossoms cunningly woven in strange device about my portrait. Mrs. Goodal came forward and kissed me while the tears fell from her eyes. “You don’t deserve it, you wicked boy, but I can’t help it,” she said. Mr. Goodal had seized both my hands in his. A beautiful girl stood a little apart watching all with wondering eyes, and in them too there were tears, such is the force of example with women. I had never seen her before, but I needed no ghost to tell me that she was Kenneth’s sister.
“This is Elfie, Roger,” said Fairy. “She wants to welcome you too. Elfie is my sister. I stole her. Oh! a sister is so much nicer than a great rough brother who runs away!”
“And this,” said Mrs. Goodal, leading forward a tall, spare gentleman, with that closely shaven face and quiet lip and eye that, with or without the conventional garb, stamp the Catholic priest all the world over—“this is our dear friend and father, the friend and father of all of us, Father Fenton.”
There was a general pause at this introduction. I suppose that my countenance must have shown some perplexity, for a general laugh followed the pause. Mrs. Goodal came to the rescue.
“You expected to meet Mr. Knowles, I suppose, sir, or the Abbot Jones. Kenneth has told me about the Abbot Jones. But you must know that the present Archdeacon Knowles is far too high and mighty a dignitary for Leighstone, and the abbot is laid up with the gout. Your father has not been to the Priory for a very long time—for so long a time that he thinks he would no longer be known there. The Herbert pew is very vacant; and Nellie has had no one to take her. Still mystified? You see what comes of silly boys running away from home and never writing. They miss all the news.”
She led me to the other end of the parlor, and I stood before a lofty ivory crucifix. The light of tapers flashed upon the thin pale face; blood gleamed from the nailed hands and feet, from the pierced side, from the bowed and thorn-crowned head. It was the figure of “the Man of Sorrows,” and the artist had thrown into the silent agony of the face an expression of infinite pity. My own heart bowed in silence.
“We are all Papists, Roger. What are you?” whispered Mrs. Goodal at my elbow.
“Nothing,” I murmured. “Nothing.”
“Nothing yet,” she whispered again. “But do you think that we have all been praying to Him all this time for nothing?”
“And my father?”
“The most inveterate Papist of us all!”
There was a tone of triumph in her voice that was almost amusing.
“How did it all come about?”
“She did it,” broke in Kenneth, pointing to his mother. “Did I not tell you that she was the sweetest woman to have her own way? If I were a heretic, I would sooner face the Grand Inquisitor himself than this most amiable of women. Set a thief to catch a thief, Roger. But come; heretics don’t abstain as do wicked creatures like these ladies. I forget, they do, though; and my heretic, fair ladies, has had nothing to eat all day; so I insist upon not another word until the fatted calf is disposed of by our returned prodigal.”
That was a merry Christmas eve. We all nestled together, and bit by bit the whole story came out. On the receipt of my first letter, after a fruitless inquiry for me, Kenneth and his mother posted down to Leighstone. Their arrival was most opportune; for my father, on hearing of my departure, suffered a relapse that laid him quite prostrate. Poor Nellie was in despair, brave heart though she was. By unremitting care he was partially restored, and then followed the long dreary months and the weary waiting, day after day, for some scrap of news from me. In such cases, the worst is generally dreaded save when the worst actually takes place, and my father drooped gradually. He was prevailed upon to pay a visit to the Goodals, and there it was that his heart, pierced with affliction, and bowed down with sorrow, opened to the holier and higher consolation that religion only affords. Father Fenton, who was invalided from a severe course of missionary labors, was staying with them, and the intercourse thus begun developed into what we have seen. On his return to Leighstone, the silent house opened up the bitter poignancy of his grief. Every familiar object on which his eye rested only served to remind him of one who had passed away; whom he accused himself of having driven away by an order that he could only now regard with abhorrence. A cold, something slight, seized him, and soon appeared alarming symptoms. In view of the recent changes, Nellie knew not to whom of our relatives to apply in this emergency, and could only write to Mrs. Goodal, who flew to her assistance. The arrival of my letter brought down Kenneth, “like a madman,” his mother said. The letter arrived just at the crisis of the fever in which my father lay; the good news was imparted to him in one of his lucid intervals, and the crisis took a favorable turn. The Christmas holy-days brought Elfie from her convent; and finally all came together, awaiting my expected return. How that letter had been kissed, petted, wept over, laughed over, spelt out inch by inch! I wonder that a fragment of it remained; but even had it been worn to dust by reverent fingers, it would not have mattered: the women knew every word of it by heart. It formed the staple topic of conversation whenever they met. There never yet was such a letter written, and the idea that the writer of it should only receive ten dollars—how much money was ten dollars?—a week was proof positive that the American people did not appreciate true genius when it found its way among them. Mr. Culpepper, indeed! Who cared what he would think? The idea of a person of the name of Culpepper having to do with men of genius! They wondered how I could consent to write for such a person at all. And Mrs. Jinks! Good gracious! that dreadful Mrs. Jinks and her “littery gents”; Mrs. Jinks and the beefsteak; Mrs. Jinks and the pork chops; Mrs. Jinks and her “mock turtle” soup; Mrs. Jinks and “her Jane,” etc. etc. Poor old Roger! Poor, dear boy! How miserable it made them all, and yet how absurdly ridiculous it all was. It made them laugh and cry in the same breath.
What a hero I had become! What was all my fancied triumph to this? What is all the success one can win in this world to the genuine love and the foolish adoration of the two or three hearts that made up our little world before we knew that great wide open beyond the boundary of our own quiet garden? And all this fuss and affection was poured out over me, who had run away from it, and thought of it so little while I was away. It was, speaking reverently, like the precious ointment in the alabaster vase, broken and poured out over me, in the fond waste of love. Why, indeed, was this waste for me? This ointment was precious, and might have been sold for many pence and given to the poor—the poor of this great world, who were hungering and thirsting after just such love as this, that we who have it accept so placidly, and let it run and diffuse itself over us, and take no care, for is not the source from which it comes inexhaustible, as the widow’s cruse of oil? But so it is, and so it will continue to be while human nature remains truly human nature. The good shepherd, leaving the ninety-nine sheep, will go after the one which was lost, and finding him, bear him on his own travel-weary and travel-worn shoulders in triumph home. The father will kill the fatted calf for the prodigal who has lived riotously and wasted his inheritance, but the faint cry of whose repentant anguish is heard from afar off. The mother’s heart will go out after the scapegrace son who is tramping the world alone, turned out of doors for misbehavior; and all the joy she feels in the good ones near her is as nothing compared with the thought that he at last has come back, sad and sorrowful and forlorn, to the home he left long ago, in the brightness of the morning, with so gay a step and so light a heart. It is unjust, frightfully unjust, that it should be so. Did not the good son so feel it, and was his protest not right? Did not the laborers in the vineyard so find it when those who came at the eleventh hour, and had borne naught of the heat and the burden of the day, received the same reward as they? And who shall say that the laborers were not right and the lord of the vineyard unjust? What trades-union could ever take into consideration such reasoning as this, forbidden by the very book of arithmetic? Wait awhile, friends. Some day when we, who now feel so keenly the injustice of it all, are fathers and mothers, let us put the question then to ourselves: “Why this waste of precious ointment on one who values it not? I will seal up the alabaster jar, let the ointment harden into stone, and no sweetness shall flow out of it.” Do so—if you can, and the world will be a very barren place. It would dry and shrivel up under arid justice. Did not the Master tell us so? Did he not say that he came to call not the just but sinners to repentance? And is it not this very injustice that makes earth likest heaven, where we are told there shall be more joy over one sinner doing penance than over the ninety-nine just who need not penance?
And here am I preaching, instead of spending my Christmas merrily like a man. But the thought of all this affection wasted on so callous a wretch as I had proved myself to be, was too tempting to let pass. Suddenly the chimes rang out from the old steeples, and we were silent, listening with softened hearts and moistening eyes.
“There is another surprise for you yet,” said Mrs. Goodal, mysteriously. “Come, I want to show you your room.”
She took me upstairs, paused a moment at the door to whisper: “It has another Occupant now, Kenneth. Go in and visit him,” opened the door and pushed me gently in.
The room was lighted only by a little lamp, through which a low flame burned with a rosy glow. The flame flickered and shone on an altar with a small tabernacle, before which Father Fenton was kneeling in silent prayer. My old room had been converted into a chapel, and there they had knelt and prayed for me. Presently the chapel was lighted up, and my father was assisted to a chair that had been prepared for him. Mr. Goodal took up his position near a harmonium, in one corner, while I retired into the other. One or two of the household came in and took their places quietly. Father Fenton rose up, and, assisted by Kenneth, vested himself, and the midnight Mass began. Soon the harmonium was heard, and then in tones that trembled at first, but in a moment cleared and grew firm and strong and glorious, Elfie, laughing Elfie, who now seemed transformed into one of those angels who brought the glad tidings long, long ago, burst forth into the Adeste Fideles.
“Natum videte
Regem angelorum.”
All present joined in the refrain, Nellie’s sweet voice mingling with the strong, manly tones of Kenneth. I saw his face light up as a soldier’s of old might at a battle cry. How happy are the earnest!
Before the Mass was ended, Father Fenton turned and spoke a few words:
“One of old said, ‘When two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.’ I need not point out to you the solemn manner in which a few moments since he who made that promise fulfilled it, for he has spoken to your own hearts. But I would call your attention to the wonderful and special manner in which Christ has visited and blessed the two or three gathered together here this night in his name. We are here like the shepherds of old, come to adore the Christ born in a manger. One by one have we dropped in, taken in hand and led gently, as though by the Lord himself. This great grace has not been given us for nothing. It has been the answer to fervent, earnest, and unceasing prayer, which, though it may sometimes seem to knock at the gates of heaven a long while in vain, has been heard all the while, and at length, entering in, falls back on our hearts laden with gifts and with graces. The two or three have increased now by one, now by another, and under Providence are destined to increase until the Master calls them away unto himself. Happy is the one who comes himself to Christ, thrice happy he who helps to lead another! He it is who answers that bitter cry of anguish that rang out from the darkness and the suffering of Calvary—‘I thirst.’ He holds up the chalice to the lips of the dying Saviour filled with the virtues of a saved soul. It was for souls Christ thirsted, and he gives him to drink. But when a conversion is wrought, when a stray sheep is brought into the fold, the work is only begun. All the debt is not paid. It is well to be filled with gratitude for the wonderful favor of God in bringing us out of the land of Egypt and the house of bondage into the land flowing with milk and honey, where the good shepherd attends his sheep, where we draw water from the living fountain. We have left behind us the fleshpots of Egypt. But there is ingratitude to be remembered and wiped out. Many weary years have we wandered in desert places seeking rest and finding none. Yet the voice of the shepherd was calling to us all the while. Peace, peace, peace! Peace to men of good-will has been ringing out of the heavens over the mountains of this world these long centuries, yet how many ears are deaf to the angels’ song! The star in the East has arisen, has moved in the heavens, and stood over his cradle—the star of light and of knowledge—yet how many eyes have been blind to its lustre and its meaning. It is because it points to a lowly place. In Bethlehem of Judæa Christ is born, not in the city of the king; in a stable, not in the palace of Herod; in a manger he is laid, wrapped in swaddling-clothes, not in the purple of royalty. He is lowly; we would be great. He is meek; we would be proud. He is a little innocent child; we would be wise among the children of men. The birth-place of Christianity is humility. We must begin there, low down, for he himself has said it: ‘Suffer little children to come unto me’; ‘Unless ye become as one of these little ones, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.’
“My brethren, my dear children, little flock whom Christ has visited really and truly in his body and blood, soul and divinity, this is our lesson—to be humble as he is. In this was his church founded on this memorable night, at this solemn hour, while day and night are in conflict. The day dawned on the new birth and the night was left for ever behind. There is no longer excuse for being children of the darkness, for the light of the world has dawned at length. It dawned in lowliness, poverty, suffering—these are its surroundings. Christ’s first worshippers on this earth were the one who bore him and her spouse, Joseph the carpenter. His second, the poor shepherds, whose watchful ears heard first the song of peace. The kings from afar off followed who were looking and praying for light from heaven, and it came. The angels guided the ignorant shepherds to where he lay; but of those to whom more was given, more was expected. The gifts of intellect, learning, and the spirit of inquiry are gifts of God, not of man, or of Satan. They are to be used for God, not sharpened against him. Happy are those to whom he has given them, who, like the Kings of the East, though far away from the lowly place where he lies, hearken to the voice of God calling to them over the wildernesses that intervene, and make answer to the divine call. Search in the right spirit—search in the spirit of humility, and honesty, and truth. To them will the star of Truth appear to guide them aright over many dangers and difficulties, and disasters mayhap, to the stable where Christ is sleeping, to lay at his feet the gifts and offerings he gave them—the gold of faith, the frankincense of hope, the myrrh of charity.”
I suppose it is intended that sermons should apply to all who hear them. That being the case, how could Father Fenton’s words apply to me? There was not a single direct allusion to me throughout. What he said might apply equally to all, and yet surely of all there I was the most guilty. I alone did not adore; and why? After all, was humility the birthplace of Christianity? But was not I humble as the rest of them? “You! who are so fond of mounting those stilts,” whispered Roger Herbert senior—“you, who spend your days and nights dreaming of the divinus afflatus—you, who would give half your life, were it yours to give, to convert those little stilts into a genuine monument, and for what purpose? That men might point and look up at the dizzy height and say, Behold Roger Herbert, the mighty, his feet on earth, his head among the gods of heaven!” And was it true that Truth had been speaking all this time, all these centuries, to so little purpose? Why was it? how could it be if the voice was divine? “The devil, the world, and the flesh, Roger; forget not the devil, the world, and the flesh. Were there only truth, we should all be of one mind; but unfortunately, truth is confronted with falsehood.” What is truth—what is truth? Ay, the old agony of the world. One alone of all that world dared to tell us that he was the Truth, he was the Way, he was the Life. “Let us find him, Roger. Father Fenton says he is in the midst of those gathered together in his name.”
Christmas passed, and a New Year dawned on us—a happy new year to all except myself. I was the only unhappy being at the Grange. Elfie went back to her convent school. My father’s health was on the high road to restoration, and the growing attachment between Kenneth and Nellie was evident even to my purblind vision. Strange to say, I did not like to talk to Kenneth as openly as at first about my doubts and difficulties, and Father Fenton’s company, when alone, I avoided, although he was the most amiable of men, gifted with wit softened by piety, and a learning that not even his modesty could conceal. He must have observed how studiously I shunned him, for, after seeking ineffectually once or twice to draw me into serious conversation, he refrained, and only spoke on ordinary topics. I began to grow restless again.
The season had advanced into an early spring; the green was already abroad and the birds beginning to come, when one afternoon, that seemed to have strayed out of summer, so soft and balmy was the air, Nellie and I sat together out on the lawn as in the old days. My father was taking a nap within; the Goodals had driven to Gnaresbridge to meet a friend whom they expected to pass by the up-town train to London. Nellie was working at something, and I was musing in silence. Suddenly she said:
“Roger, do you remember the promises you made me the night before you ran away?”
“Yes, Fairy.”
“Well, sir?”
“Well, madam?”
“Is that all?”
“Is what all?”
“Do you only remember your promise?”
“Is not that a great deal?”
“No; unless you have kept it.”
“Ah—h—h!”
“What do you mean by ah—h?”
“What did I promise?”
“That from that day forward you would not only try not to do harm, but to do some good for others as well as for yourself.”
“That is a very big promise.”
“No bigger now than it was then.”
“But it means more now than it did then.”
“Not a bit, not a bit, not a bit!”
“Things look to me so differently now. One grows so much older in a year sometimes.”
“Then you have not kept your promise? O Roger!”
“Good, though you can spell it in four letters, is a very large word, Nellie, and means so much; and others mean so many. Not to do much harm is one thing; but to do good, not once in a while, but to be constant in it—that is another thing, Nellie, and that was what I promised. That promise I cannot say I have kept.”
Nellie bent her head lower over her work, and I believe I saw some tears fall, but she said nothing. I went on:
“Now Kenneth does good.”
There was no mistake about the tears this time, although the head bent a little lower still. “Kenneth does a great deal of good. He goes about among the poor as regularly as a physician, and whatever his medicine may be it seems to do them more good than any they can get at the druggist’s. He has sent I don’t know how many youngsters off to school, where he pays for them. In fact, he seems to me to be always scheming and thinking about others and never dreaming of himself, whereas I am always scheming and thinking about myself and never seem to see anybody else in the world. Why, what are you doing with that stuff in your hands, Nellie? You are sewing it anyhow.”
“O Roger! You—you—” she could say no more, but hid her face, that was rosy and pure as the dawn, on my breast.
“A very pretty picture,” said a deep voice behind us, and Nellie started away from me, while all the blood rushed back to her heart. She was so white that Kenneth—for it was he who had stolen up unobserved at the moment—was frightened, and said:
“Pardon me, Miss Herbert, if I have startled you. I have only this instant come, and quite forgot that the grass silenced the sound of my footsteps. Take this chair—shall I bring a glass of water?”
“No, thank you; I am better now. It was only a moment. We did not hear you.”
“May I join you, then? Or was it a tête-à-tête?”
“No; sit down, Kenneth. The fact is, we were just discussing the character of an awful scamp.”
“Who arrived just too late to hear any evil of himself—is that it?”
“No, he was here all the time,” said Nellie, laughing, and herself again.
“But what brings you from Gnaresbridge so soon, Kenneth, and all alone? Where have you left Mr. and Mrs. Goodal?”
“Mrs. Goodal had some shopping to do at Gnaresbridge, and Mr. Goodal, as in duty bound, waited patiently the results of that interesting operation. His patience makes me blush for mine. The shopping is such a very extensive operation that I preferred a walk back, and even now you see I have arrived before them.”
“How very ungallant, Mr. Goodal! I am surprised at you. I thought Roger was the only gentleman who didn’t like shopping.”
“On the contrary, I am quite fond of it. I used to do all my own shopping in New York. I got Mrs. Jinks to buy me some things once, but as she, woman-like, measured everybody by Mr. Jinks, the articles, though an excellent fit for him, were an abomination on me.”
“And what did you do with them?”
“What could I do with them? Gave them to Mrs. Jinks, of course, and for the future did my own shopping. Indeed, I am getting quite lazy here. There is nothing for a fellow to do—is there, Kenneth?”
“I was thinking of that as I came along.”
“Thinking of what?”
“The great puzzle—What to do. I put it in every imaginable form. The question was this: ‘Kenneth Goodal, what are you going to do with yourself?’ and the whole eight miles passed before I could arrive at anything like a satisfactory conclusion. I finally resolved to leave the question to arbitration, and get others to decide for me. I have already applied to one.”
He paused, and his gaze was fixed on the ground. His face was flushed, and his broad brow knitted as though trying to find the right clue to a puzzling query. I glanced at Nellie, and observed that her face had whitened again, while her eyes were also bent upon the ground, and her breath came and went painfully.
“Yes,” he went on without raising his head—Nellie was seated between us—“I determined to leave my case to arbitration. Your father was one of the arbiters; you were to be another, Roger; and a certain young lady was to be a third. I had intended to attack the members of this high court of arbitration singly; but as I find two of them here together, I see no reason why I should not receive my verdict at once.. ..”
A further report of this most important and interesting case it is not for me to give, inasmuch as I was not present. I saw at once that the decision rested now with the third arbiter, and that my opinion was practically valueless in the matter. How the case proceeded I cannot tell. Thinking that there was little for me to do, and how deeply engaged were the other two parties, I took advantage of the noiseless grass to slink away without attracting the attention of either, heartily ashamed of myself for being so persistent an intruder where it was clear I was not particularly wanted. It was a lovely evening, and I took a long quiet ramble all by myself. How much longer the court was in session I do not know, I only know that it was broken up before I entered, just in time for dinner. I noticed that in my father’s eyes there was a softer look than usual; that Mrs. Goodal took Nellie’s place at table, opposite to my father; that Mr. Goodal and myself were neighbors, while opposite to us sat the adjourned court of arbitration, looking—looking as young persons look only once in their lives. There was a rather awkward silence on my entrance, which I found so unpleasant that I rattled away all through dinner. I must have been excellent company for once in my life; for though at this moment I do not recollect a single sentence that I uttered, there was so much laughter throughout the dinner, laughter that grew and grew until we found ourselves all talking at length, all joining in, all joking, all so merry that we were astounded to find how the evening had passed. My father looked quite young again.
As I was retiring to my own room for the night, Nellie caught me, put both her arms around my neck, and looked up into my eyes a long time without saying a word, until at last she seemed to find in them something she was looking for, and when, kissing her, I asked if I should blow the candle out again, as I did on a former memorable confession, she flew away, her face lost amid blushes, laughter, and tears. I was congratulating myself on seeing an end to a long day, when a guilty tap came to my door, and Kenneth stole in with the air of a burglar who purposed making for the first valuable he could lay hands on, and vanishing with it through the window. He closed the door as cautiously as though a policeman, whom he feared to disturb, was napping without, and sat down without saying a word. I looked at the ceiling; he sat and stared at me. In his turn, he began examining my eyes. I could bear it no longer, but burst out laughing, and held out my hand, which he almost crushed in his.
“You are as true a knight as ever was old Sir Roger,” said Kenneth, wringing my hand till I cried out with pain. “I went on talking for I don’t know how long, and saying I forget now what, but, on looking up, I found there was only one listener. Well, we did without you.”
“So now you know what to do with yourself. Happy man! What a pity Elfie is only fourteen! She might tell me what to do with Roger Herbert.”
I saw the two who, after my father, I loved the best in all the world made one. I waited until they returned from the bridal trip, by which time my father was fully restored to health. We spent that season in London, and when it was over returned to Leighstone. The brown hand of autumn was touching the woods, when one morning I began packing my trunk again, and that same evening ate my last dinner at the Grange. It was not a pleasant dinner. The ladies were in tears at times, and the gentlemen were inclined to be taciturn. I did my best to rally the party as on a former occasion, but the effort was not very successful.
“Oh! you are all Sybarites here,” was my closing rejoinder to all queries, tears, and complaints; “and I should never do anything among you. Not so fortunate as Kenneth, who has found some one to tell him what to do with himself, I am driven back on my own resources, and must work out that interesting problem for myself. I was advancing in that direction when called away. I go back to resume my labors in the old way. You cannot realize the delicious feeling that comes over one at times who is struggling all alone, and groping in the darkness towards a great light that he sees afar off and hopes to reach. I leave my father with a better son than I, and my sister with something that even sisters prefer to brothers. I am only restless here. There is work to be done beyond there. I may be making a mistake: if so, I shall come back and let you know.”