He was my brother to all intents and purposes, though really my second cousin. But I had no brother, or sister, or mother, only a father and aunt, and Tom had lived with us since I was a little girl of ten, and now he was going out to India to make his fortune. His ship would sail on the morrow, and I could not refuse to go with him as far as the highway, where he was to take the stage for London. It was a forlorn, dreary walk through the pleasant grassy lane; for I loved Tom very dearly, and there was a great wrench in my heart at the thought of parting with him. He was silent, and never spoke a word until the stile was reached, where we were to part. Then, suddenly lifting me high in his arms, as if I were a child, for I was very short and he was very tall, he kissed my forehead and lips, and cried like a baby, as he said:
“Good-by, little Norah, Mrs. Archibald Browning, good-by, and God bless you; and if that husband ever does abuse you, tell him he will answer for it to me, Tom Gordon, the gawky cousin with more legs than brains.”
“Oh, Tom,” I said, struggling to my feet, “you know Archie did not mean that, and maybe he never said it. I wish you did not hate him so.”
“I don’t hate him, Norah. I simply do not like him, or any of his race. They are a proud set, who think you highly honored to be admitted into the blooded family of Brownings. And then, too, Norah,” he continued, with that peculiar smile which was his one beauty and made him irresistible, “then, too, Norah, you see—you know—I’m not your brother; I’m only your second cousin, and though I never thought you very handsome, you are the nicest girl I ever knew, and—well, I think I meant to marry you myself!”
He burst into a merry laugh and looked straight in my face as I drew back from him with a gasp, exclaiming:
“You, Tom; you marry me! Why, I’m old enough to be your grandmother!”
“You are twenty, I am nineteen; that’s all the difference, though I confess that you have badgered, and scolded, and lectured me enough for forty grandmothers,” he said; “but there’s the stage, and now it’s really good-by.”
Two minutes more and I was walking back alone through the quiet shady lane, where Tom and I had played together so often, and where now were the remains of a playhouse he had built under a spreading oak. There was his room, divided from mine by a line of stones, and there in the wall the little niche where I kept my dishes and hid the gooseberry tarts away from greedy Tom. How happy we had been together, making believe sometimes that I was his mother and he my sick baby, which I tried to rock to sleep in my lap, finding his long legs a great inconvenience and a serious obstacle to much petting on my part. Again he was a fierce knight and I a lorn maiden shut up in some grim fortress—usually old Dunluce Castle—for we had once visited the north of Ireland and explored the ruins of what some writer terms “the grandest, romantickest, awfullest sea-king’s home in all the broad kingdom.” We had had our quarrels, too, and even fights, in which I always came off victor, owing to my peculiar mode of warfare, as I had a habit of springing upon him like a little cat and tearing his face with my nails, while he was usually content with jerky pulls at my hair. But all that was over now, and buried with the doll whose head he had broken because I would not stay home and nurse him when he had the quinsy, and could only talk in a wheezy kind of way. He had threatened revenge, and taken it upon my prettiest Paris doll, and I had flown at him like a tiger and scratched his nose till it bled, and cried myself sick, and then we had made it up and buried dolly near the old playhouse in the lane, and reared a slab to her memory, and planted some daisies on her grave. And just here, near what seemed to be the grave of my childhood, I sat down that summer afternoon and thought of all those years—of Tom on his way to India, and of the future opening so brightly before me, for I was the betrothed wife of Archibald Browning, who belonged to one of the best families in the county, and in less than a month we were to be married and spend our honeymoon in Switzerland, among the glorious Alps, of which I had dreamed so much. I knew that Archie’s mother was very proud, and thought her son might have looked higher than Norah Burton, especially as there was a possible peerage in prospect, but she was civil to me, and had said that a season in London would improve me greatly, if such a little creature could be improved; and Archie, I was sure, loved me dearly, notwithstanding that he sometimes criticised my style and manner, and wished I was more like his cousin, Lady Darinda Cleaver, who, I heard, powdered her face and penciled her eyebrows, and was the finest rider on Rotten Row. Tom, who had been often in London, had seen the Lady Darinda, and reported her as a perfect giantess, who wore a man’s hat, with a flapper behind on the waist of her riding-suit, and sat her horse as stiffly and straight as if held in her place by a ramrod, and never rode faster than a black ant could trot.
This was Tom’s criticism, which I had repeated to Archie, who laughed a little, and pulled his light brown mustache, and said: “Tom was not a proper judge of stylish women, and that Darinda’s manners were faultless.”
I had no doubt they were, though I had never seen her, but I should ere long, as she had consented to be one of my bride-maids, and had written me a note which was very prettily worded, and very patronizing in its tone, and made me dislike her thoroughly. She was in London now, Archie had written in the letter in which he told me he should be with me on the day after Tom’s departure. I was never so glad for his coming, I think, for my heart was very heavy at parting with Tom, whose words, “I meant to marry you myself,” kept ringing in my ears as I sat alone in the grassy lane by the ruins of the playhouse he had built. Not that I attached the slightest importance to them, or believed for a moment that he was serious in what he said, for he was my brother, my dear, good brother, who had been so much to me, and whom I missed so much, that at last I laid my head upon dollie’s miniature grave and cried bitterly for the boy traveling so fast to London, and the ship which would take him away. There was, however, comfort in the thought that Archie was coming on the morrow, and the next morning found me with spirits restored, eager and expectant for my love. But Archie did not come, and the hours wore on and there was no news of him until the following day, when there came a note from his mother telling me he was sick.