‘Yes, after you came,’ said Sophy; ‘but I believe I helped him to think truth disagreeable. I showed my scorn for his want of boldness, instead of helping him. Think of my having fancied he had no courage.’
‘Kindness taught him courage,’ said Albinia. ‘It might perhaps have earlier taught him moral courage. If you and he could have leant against each other, and been fused together, you would have made something like what Edmund was, I suppose.’
‘I drove him off,’ cried Sophy. ‘I was no sister to him. Will you bring me his forgiveness?’
‘Indeed I will; and you may feel sure of it already, dearest. It will make you gentler all your life.’
‘No, I shall grow harder and harsher the longer I live, and the fewer I have to love me in spite of myself.’
‘I think not,’ said Albinia. ‘Humility will make your severity more gentle, and you will soften, and win love and esteem.’
She looked up, but cried, ‘I shall never make up to Gilbert nor to grandmamma!’
Albinia felt it almost as hard to leave her as the two little ones.
When once on her journey, and feeling each moment an advance towards the goal, Albinia was less unhappy than she could have thought possible; she trusted to her brother, and enjoyed the absence of responsibility, and while he let her go on, could give her mind to what pleased and interested him, and he, who was an excellent courier, so managed that there were few detentions to overthrow her equanimity on the way to Marseilles.
But when the Vectis came in sight of the rocky isle, with its white stony heights, the heart-sickness of apprehension grew over her, and she saw, as in a mist, the noble crescent-shaped harbour, the stately ramparts, mighty batteries, the lofty terraces of flat-roofed dwellings, apparently rather hewn out of, than built on, the dazzling white stone, between the intense blue of the sky above and of the sea below. Her eye roamed as in a dream over the crowds of gay boats with white awnings, and the motley crowds of English and natives, the boatmen screaming and fighting for the luggage, and beggars plaintively whining out their entreaties for small coins. Her brother Maurice had been at Malta as a little boy, and remembered the habits of the place enough, as soon as they had set foot on shore, to secure a brown-skinned loiterer, in Phrygian cap, loose trousers, and crimson sash, to act as guide and porter.