Long ago, in the bonnie woods around Burley, he used to wonder to find dead birds in dark crannies of the rocks. He could understand it now. They had crawled into the crannies to die, out of sight and alone.
His club friends tried to rally him. They tried to cheer him up in more ways than one. Be it whispered, they tried to make him seek solace in gambling and in the wine-cup.
I do not think that I have held up my hero as a paragon. On the contrary, I have but represented him as he was—a bold, determined lad, with many and many a fault; but now I am glad to say this one thing in his favour: he was not such a fool as to try to drown his wits in wine, nor to seek to make money questionably by betting and by cards.
After Archie’s letter home, in which he told Elsie that he was “something in soap,” he had written another, and a more cheerful one. It was one which cost him a good deal of trouble to write; for he really could not get over the notion that he was telling white lies when he spoke of “his prospects in life, and his hopes being on the ascendant;” and as he dropped it into the receiver, he felt mean, demoralised; and he came slowly along George Street, trying to make himself believe that any letter was better than no letter, and that he would hardly have been justified in telling the whole truth.
Well, at Burley Old Farm things had rather improved, simply for this reason: Squire Broadbent had gone in heavily for retrenchment.
He had proved the truth of his own statement: “It does not take much in this world to make a man happy.” The Squire was happy when he saw his wife and children happy. The former was always quietly cheerful, and the latter did all they could to keep up each other’s hearts. They spent much of their spare time in the beautiful and romantic tower-room, and in walking about the woods, the grounds, and farm; for Rupert was well now, and was his father’s right hand, not in the rough-and-tumble dashing way that Archie would have been, but in a thoughtful, considering way.
Mr Walton had gone away, but Branson and old Kate were still to the fore. The Squire could not have spared these.
I think that Rupert’s religion was a very pretty thing. He had lost none of his simple faith, his abiding trust in God’s goodness, though he had regained his health. His devotions were quite as sincere, his thankfulness for mercies received greater even than before, and he had the most unbounded faith in the efficacy of prayer.
So his sister and he lived in hope, and the Squire used to build castles in the green parlour of an evening, and of course the absent Archie was one of the kings of these castles.
After a certain number of years of retrenchment, Burley was going to rise from its ashes like the fabled phoenix—machinery and all. The Squire was even yet determined to show these old-fashioned farmer folks of Northumbria “a thing or two.”