"I cannot help myself. Good-bye."
Mr. Henry was curious, but he would not question further. Trace's hand was still a prisoner. "When pain is too fresh to be spoken of, Trace, there is only one thing to do," he gently whispered. "I learnt it."
"Yes. What?" asked Trace, rather vacantly.
"Carry it to God. And then in time you will learn that it came down to you from Him; came in love. One of those mountains that lie in the road to Heaven, so sharp to the feet in climbing them, so good to look back upon when the summit is gained, the labour done. Good night."
The low persuasive accents lingered on Raymond Trace's ear as he went out into the night; the suffering, kind, gentle face rested on his memory. God help him! God pardon him for the additional thorns he had gratuitously cast on this young man's already thorny path. What a wicked spirit had been his! He had sown thorns and nettles and noxious weeds; and in accordance with the inevitable law of Nature, they had come up to sting and pierce him.
[CHAPTER XXIV.]
In the Quadrangle.
Almost sooner than perhaps even Trace anticipated, was Mr. Henry (one can't help adhering to the familiar name) to be enlightened; for, as Trace went out of Mrs. Butter's, Mrs. Paradyne went in. Ah, could he ever forget his astonishment at what then took place. She fell on her knees at the bedside; and, pouring out the news she brought, besought him, with tears and kisses and heartfelt lamentations, to forgive her. To forgive her for her conduct to him!
That past calamity, five years ago, falling on her with the fury of an avalanche, seemed to have suddenly changed Mrs. Paradyne's nature. The sense of disgrace had warped every kindly feeling of her heart, to have brought out all there was within her of selfishness. She had been a proud woman, secure in the self-esteem that arises from a consciousness of ever striving to do well. The blow seemed to have dried up all affection, except for George, her youngest-born, whom she had ever passionately loved; and her time was spent in silently, sometimes openly, reproaching the husband who had so wronged her. Her letters to her eldest son in Germany grew few and cold; she accepted as her due what aid he could send, returning scant thanks for it. When, four years later, he came to Orville, she scarcely received him patiently. She resented his having advised the removal of George to Orville College, now that it was known the Loftus boys and Trace were at the same; and she, from motives of policy, forbade him to own relationship with them, or to call her mother. Were it disclosed that he was a Paradyne, he might no longer be able to work for them. He must go to the house but once in a way, and then as an acquaintance. But for the ordeal of sorrow he had been passing through for four years, these cruelties might have well nigh gone to break Arthur Paradyne's heart. As it was, they were but additional drops in the cup of bitterness he was draining.
But when the astounding news, that her husband had been innocent, burst upon Mrs. Paradyne, she woke up from her nightmare. With the lifting of the stigma from their heads, all her former kindly nature (it had not been very great) returned; the hard scales fell from her eyes and heart, and she saw how selfish, nay, how cruel, had been her treatment of her eldest son. In nearly the selfsame hour, she received tidings that his sickness—in which she had previously only half-believed—had increased alarmingly; she heard the report that it might end in death. And here she was on her knees at his bedside; the tears streaming from her eyes, kisses from her lips, pouring forth the blessed news, just heard, and beseeching him to forgive her; to love her as of yore. It seemed to him that he was repaid for all.
Morning rose. Standing in the quadrangle, that favourite place of theirs, under the early November sun, were the college boys, George Paradyne making one. Strange and startling tidings had just been disclosed to them. The gainer of the Orville, so universally assumed to be Trace, might probably turn out to be somebody else.