Castle Blair: A Story of Youthful Days

by Flora L. Shaw

It was not the effect of the danger from which he had escaped; that would probably have made him simply hard and indignant; but Pat's confession had opened his eyes to many things. Unexpected kindness, together with Murtagh's dangerous illness, had filled Pat with remorse. He had confessed not only his full share in this last enterprise, but his unaided burning of Mr. Plunkett's hay-ricks; and it was in hearing of Murtagh's entire innocence with respect to that misfortune that Mr. Plunkett's self-confidence received a shock of which the effect was to him considerable. The fact that it was only a child whom he had misjudged and unfairly tried to punish, did not make a difference to him as it would have done to most people. He had been unjust; and whether the injustice had been committed towards a child, a man, or a chimpanzee, had, according to his way of looking at it, nothing to do with the question.

He was accustomed to respect himself, to think himself right, and now he found that he had been wrong,—more wrong than the child he had despised. He may have been proud, but he was not a man to shirk anything. He vividly realized the ruin into which the two boys had nearly rushed, and while he made no attempt even in his own mind to exculpate them altogether, he remembered that they were children, and blamed himself unsparingly for the treatment which had roused them to such a pitch of passion.

He had nothing to reproach himself with so far as Pat was concerned. At any other time he would have said the boy had only got what he deserved when he was caned for an impertinence. But the revelation of his injustice to Murtagh had strangely shaken his trust in himself. He had been wrong with him, perhaps he had often been wrong with other people, too.

Looking back over his feelings he was forced to acknowledge to himself that he had never for a moment felt forgivingly towards Murtagh. The child had been greater than he; he freely and humbly acknowledged it. He did not know that he owed his life to little Marion's love, but he turned to it in his trouble. Whatever he had done to others he had never judged her too harshly, and her clinging arms about his neck comforted him now when, though even Marion scarcely knew it, he was in need of comfort. And perhaps the gentle little spirit upon which at this time he was leaning influenced his actions more than either of them knew, for he certainly could not have been expected to feel particularly tender towards Pat; and yet Nessa was surprised by the kindness with which he entered into their plans for him, and relieved them of making arrangements.

He advised Mr. Blair to apprentice the lad to a trade in Dublin, where he would be removed from the influence of his bad companions, and he himself took the trouble to find a respectable household in which the boy might live; so that when the cloud of delirium passed from Murtagh's brain and he asked with almost his first connected words for Pat O'Toole, Nessa was able to tell him truly that Pat was quite safe and was doing well.

He had spent more than one day in the big arm-chair, looking out with all an invalid's pleasure at the returning life which the spring sunshine was bringing to the land; and as he sat and watched the purple shadows of the trees and hedges contrasting with the faint green of the winter grass, he had many thoughts that he would have found it hard to express to any one. Never had the crocuses seemed so bright or the snowdrops so beautiful as they seemed this year; and when one day the children brought him in a spray of bursting hawthorn and a bunch of lord and lady leaves from the hedges, tears of pleasure came into his eyes at the sight.

Life was very peaceful and beautiful in those early spring days. Nessa's presence seemed to have brought a spring of gentleness to the children's hearts, and the joy in Murtagh's recovery shed sunshine through the house. The boys, too, were near the realization of one of their chief hopes. They were to go to school. For Mr. Launcelot Blair, on hearing from his brother an account of all that happened, had written to say that he was coming home on leave, and that one of his first cares should be to find a private tutor to whom Murtagh and Bobbo might go to be prepared for being sent next year to Eton.

"From all that you tell me of them," he wrote, "I believe that the discipline of a public school is what they want. They have been so left to themselves that they judge nothing by an ordinary standard, and a lot of rough schoolboys will knock common sense into them a great deal faster than you or I could do it."

To-day Murtagh was to see Mr. Plunkett for the first time since his recovery. He felt some natural nervousness at the prospect of the interview, but convinced of his fault, he had looked forward anxiously to making the only reparation in his power.

And now, while King and Senior squabbled over a tempting piece of brown bread too large for either of them to swallow, and Murtagh lay back in the chair, amused but scarcely taking the trouble to laugh, a big Newfoundland poked his black muzzle between and carried off the morsel.