“About what? About whom?”
“About my brother.”
“Your brother? I did not know you had a brother.”
“We don’t talk about him in a general way. He has been a wanderer over the earth for many years. He was never with us at Fernhurst. He and my father had a terrible quarrel before we left Yorkshire—chiefly about his college debts, I believe. There seemed to be dreadful difficulties at Cambridge. My father used all his influence to get poor Harold out of the country, and succeeded in getting him a berth in the Cape Mounted Police. Parting with him perhaps went nearer to break my mother’s heart than our loss of home and fortune.”
“It must have been a hard parting.”
“It was indeed hard. He went away in disgrace. My father would not speak to him or look at him. He lived at the Vicarage during those last weeks before the ship sailed away with him to Africa. The Vicar and his wife were very good to him, but everybody felt that he was under a cloud. I fear—I fear that he had done something very wrong at Cambridge—something for which he might have been arrested—for he seemed to be in hiding at the Vicarage. And he left one night, and was driven over to Hull, where he went on board a boat bound for Hamburg, and he was to sail from Hamburg for the Cape. My mother and I went to say good-bye to him that last evening, after dark; the others were too young to be told anything; they hardly remember him. He kissed us, and cried over us, and promised mother that for her sake he would try to do well—that he would bear the hardest life in order to redeem his character. He promised that he would write to her by every mail. The dog-cart was at the door while he was saying this. The Vicar came into the room to hurry him away. I have never seen my brother since that night.”
CHAPTER XII.
“ONE BORN TO LOVE YOU, SWEET.”
“And Mr. Sefton,” asked Vansittart, “what has he to do with this?”
“He was with my brother at Cambridge—in the same year, at the same college, Trinity. It was not till the year before last that he ever spoke to me about Harold, or that I knew they had been friends. But one summer afternoon when he called and happened to find me in the garden, alone—a thing that seldom happens in our family—he began to talk to me, very kindly, with a great deal of good feeling, about Harold. He said he had been slow to speak about him, as he knew that he must be in some measure under a cloud. And then I told him how unhappy I was about my poor brother; and how it was four or five years since anything had been heard of him directly or indirectly. His last letter had told us that he was going to join a party of young men who were just setting out upon an exploring tour in the Mashona country. They were willing to take him with them on very easy terms, as he was a fine shot, and strong and active. He would be little better than a servant in the expedition, he told me.”