It made me feel more than ever that I was alone. My father had cared so much about my marrying Hildred; and now Cuthbert's return, which put an end to that thought for ever, awoke no interest in him. He was neither surprised nor sorry that Cuthbert and Hildred should have been standing together beside his bed.
Hildred was very quiet. She waited on my father with careful tenderness, and avoided as much as she could speaking to me. When she had done everything for my father, she stood still for a long while looking down at him. Perhaps, like me, she half-envied him his peaceful rest.
Nearly everybody in the village came up in the course of the day to see Cuthbert. The news of his return had spread far and wide, and his old friends thronged to welcome him, hardly able to believe that he was really the Cuthbert Franklyn they had so long talked of as dead. Everybody wished me joy.
'I'm sure I'm as glad as though it had been a son of my own,' said good old Esther Reynolds. 'I knew how you'd feel, Willie, let alone Hildred. Just at this time too, it seems sent to cheer you up a bit, now your father lies so ill. I said so when I heard the news, and that I must make shift to get up to the Castle and tell Willie Lisle how I thought about him; for, as I said to my master, the two boys were wonderful fond of each other—more than most real brothers. Now there are my two lads, quarrelled at the fair last Michaelmas, and haven't so much as spoken one to the t'other since.'
Cuthbert looked at me and I at him, and we held out our hands to each other. Everybody was shaking hands and we were not noticed. As I felt his strong left-handed grasp, something that was like a cloud seemed to roll away from between us.
'It's all right now, old chap,' he said, low enough for no one but me to hear.
So it was 'all right' from that time forth between him and me. But he began by degrees to see that Hildred was changed, and that his fancy the night he had come home was no mistake.
He was very patient and gentle to her, even when she was the most changeable or cold. He never complained; only he often sat still without speaking, with a sad look on his face.
'I must give her time,' he said to me once or twice. 'It will come right by-and-by. I have grown strange to her. Will, I sometimes think this is a judgment on me for the selfish way I went and left her when I first enlisted.'
'You must wait,' I used to say.