On more than one occasion, the elder boy had braved and defied his father in defence of the younger brother.
It was scarcely strange, therefore, that there should arise between the two brothers an affection beyond the ordinary measure of brotherly love. Valentine had supplied the place of both parents to his brother George,—the place of the mother, who lay buried in Allanbay churchyard; the place of the father, who had sunk into a living death of drunkenness and profligacy.
They were not peasant-born these Jernams. The father had been a lieutenant in the Royal Navy; but had deservedly lost his commission, and had come, with his devoted wife, to hide his disgrace at Allanbay. The vices which had caused his expulsion from the navy had increased with every year, until the family had sunk to the lowest depths of poverty and degradation, in spite of the wife's heroic efforts to accomplish the reform of a reprobate. She had struggled nobly till the last, and had died broken-hearted, leaving the helpless children to the mercy of a wretch whose nature had become utterly debased and brutalized.
Throughout their desolate childhood the brothers had been all in all to each other, and as soon as George was old enough to face the world with his brother, the two boys ran away to sea, and obtained employment on board a small trading vessel.
At sea, as on shore, Valentine stood between his younger brother and all hardships. But the rough sailors were kinder than the drunken father had been, and the two lads fared pretty well.
Thus began the career of the two Jernams. Through all changes of fortune, the brothers had clung to each other. Despite all differences of character, their love for each other had known neither change nor diminution; and to-day, walking alone upon this quiet country road, the tears clouded Valentine Jernam's eyes as he remembered how often he had trodden it in the old time with his little brother in his arms.
"I shall see his dear face on the fifth," he thought; "God bless him!"
The old aunt lived in a cottage near the entrance to the village. She was comfortably off now—thanks to the two merchant captains; but she had been very poor in the days of their childhood, and had been able to do but little for the neglected lads. She had given them shelter, however, when they had been afraid to go home to their father, and had shared her humble fare with them very often.
Mrs. Jernam, as she was called by her neighbours, in right of her sixty years of age, was sitting by the window when her nephew opened the little garden-gate: but she had opened the door before he could knock, and was standing on the threshold ready to embrace him.
"My boy," she exclaimed, "I have been looking for you so long!"