For Lady Dudley, who was in delicate health, turned deadly pale, and lay half fainting.
In a moment the boy was himself again, and, with a bottle of aromatic vinegar in his hand, bent over his mother—making her smell it, using all the while every endearing term he could think of; and when she was restored, he said bravely, "Mother, dear mother, don't look like that again, and I'll do whatever is best. I'll go, and show you, and uncle too, that I'm not selfish. I will be brave for your sake; see if I don't. Only, I may come back soon, mayn't I? And you'll not send me far-off; say you'll not send me far!"
"No, my boy, my own darling boy, you will be only a few hours' distance by train. And you will come often home to see us all; mother could not live long without her boy. God bless and keep him!"
No more words passed on the subject, that day in Sir James's presence; but more than one inmate of the castle noticed that the boy played no more, but sat silently under the shade of the old trees, or else at his mother's couch. Poor child! He could not remember his father's death, so this was his first sorrow. But true to his promise, he kept bravely up, and the tears which he shed were shed alone, where no eye but that of his Father in heaven saw them. Not for worlds would he increase the sorrow which he saw his mother was feeling at parting with him.
"By the way, Charlotte," her brother remarked, on the day of his return from leaving his nephew at the much-dreaded school, "Dr. Bowles mentioned to me that he would put James under the special care of one of the steadiest boys in his school—Ronald Macintosh, an orphan lad from Scotland. I wonder if he can be a son of the Elenora Macintosh whose husband fell in the Afghan War, and of whom our brother Willie used to speak as the sweetest Christian lady he ever met. I should not wonder if it is the same; for now I remember Dr. Bowles said his uncle had a property in the north called Benvourd, and I know Willie used to speak of Elenora's home by a name something like that."
Lady Dudley's face brightened for the first time since she had parted from her child. "Oh," she said, "if he be a son of Captain Macintosh, of the 14th Indian Cavalry, he will be well brought up, for both father and mother were Christians; though, to be sure, they have been dead some time. O Edward, will they be kind to my boy, my little son? How will he bear it? And how shall I?"
These last words were to herself. And then she went with her heavy heart to the very best place she could go with it—even to the throne of grace; there to seek again help for her loved child, and strength for herself to bear up bravely for his sake. She did not fail to ask for this child so richly gifted with the world's wealth, that he might learn to use it aright, and to estimate it at its true value; and in the spirit if not the very words of Elenora Macintosh's dying prayer, she asked that her loved boy might have the true riches, even those heavenly ones which are "better than gold."
If any parent thinks that her grief at parting from her boy for so short a time is exaggerated, let such bear in mind all that he had been to her from his birth, and that he was her "only son," and she was "a widow."
[CHAPTER VI.]
SCHOOL LIFE.