“Ay, Missy. And,” added Jim, with a sudden, natural break in his self-control, “won’t you please try to be kind to me? I’m your own father’s son.”
“What!” exclaimed Frances, drawing back against the gate. “Jim! You! What do you mean?”
“I’m Mr. Morland’s eldest son,” said Jim, in hurried tones, vibrating with mingled hope and fear. The hope was built on memory alone, the fear was roused by the shrinking dread he had fancied present in Frances’s face and voice.
“My mother was Martha East, Grandfather’s only daughter,—there had been one son, who had died. My mother wished to marry Mr. Morland, but Grandfather wouldn’t let her, for fear he’d tire of her; so they ran away, and married without leave. Mr. Morland was good to Mother, and they were very happy.”
Jim paused a moment, in keen distress, for he saw that Frances had grown white, and that she trembled as she leant for support against the gate.
“Not long before he married, Mr. Morland had promised a great Society in London to go for them to some country where he had travelled, and try to find out something they wanted to know. So when the time came he was obliged to go right away to some place in Asia; and before he went he took my mother to her old home—for he had no relations of his own—and begged Grandfather to take care of her till he came back. When he’d been away three months, word came to England that he’d been lost—taken prisoner, and carried off by some robber-tribes. There was no more heard of him, and Mother began to fret and pine, for it was said he’d never come home again. Mother lived only a few months after she’d got the news. She said she couldn’t live without her husband. I was born two months before she died.”
Jim hesitated, his voice faltering again as he glanced at Frances’s face, in which the dread was now too clear to allow of mistake. The hopefulness left the lad’s tones altogether, and he finished his story in nervous haste.
“They thought I’d die too, but I didn’t; and Grandfather, being alone, except for me, was glad I lived. Mother had called me Austin after my father, and James after her brother; but Grandfather always called me Jim. He’d loved his daughter dearly, but he was proud, and didn’t like her having married among gentlefolk, who’d look down on him as just a rough farmer. So, seeing he thought as my father was dead, as well as my mother, he reckoned he’d keep me and bring me up a working-man.
“I was six months old when Mr. Morland came back. He had been rescued by some travellers, who had been sent to search for him. When Grandfather heard the news, he made up his mind as he’d keep me still, and he did. They said in the certificate as my mother had died of a fever that was about the village where Grandfather lived then; and Grandfather took this paper and went to town to meet my father, and told him how Mother had died, but never a word about me. My father was dreadfully grieved not to find his wife waiting for him; and Grandfather told him—quite true—how she’d always loved him, and fretted after him, and spoken of him tender at the last.
“Then Grandfather took me away to the north, but he always managed to know where my father was. He knew when Mr. Morland married again, and that he had children, and when he died. And a few months ago, knowing he was failing in health and soon to leave me, he began to think as he oughtn’t to have kept me away from my father’s folk, so that I’d be left all alone in the world; and he found out where you were living, and bought Rowdon Smithy so that we could settle near you. He meant that some day I should come to you and beg you to be good to me.” Jim’s eyes and voice pleaded eloquently. “I’m your brother, Missy! your own father’s son. I’ll always care for you and little master if you’ll let me. I’d be proud to work for you, only”—Jim sighed forlornly—“there’s naught you need.”