Orville College: A Story

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"Hopper will be floored—as he deserves to be. Not a single penny shall he get out of me."

"But he will make Mr. Trace's fraud known, out of revenge, Sir Simon!"

"It is known already known by this time to the very length and breadth of the land. You don't suppose Mr. Loftus would suffer your father's name to lie a day under its obloquy! Not he: if Loftus has a proud nature, it is a just one. And so is Bertie's."

"And generous too," cried Mr. Henry, his face flushing with its old pleasant light. "Bertie never once insulted George by a look or a word; but stood by him quietly in many ways, smoothing things for him. He will make a good and brave man. He comes here every day to sit with me. I think the duel did him good. It took some of the assumption out of his spirit."

Down sat Sir Simon with a burst of laughter. That duel, now that he had overcome the horror it brought to him at the time, was a rich joke. Gall and Bertie winced at its remembrance still. But they had been firm friends since.

The days went on. Mr. Henry had more visitors than he sometimes knew what to do with. His mother was there often; Mary occasionally, as she could spare time from her occupations with Miss Rose Brabazon, whose resident governess she was now. Mrs. Paradyne was eating the bitter bread of repentance: the mistaken line of conduct she had pursued to him, her eldest and dutiful son, grew harder and harder to reflect upon. She could not say so; it distressed him too much, and she sat mostly in silence, letting him hold her hand, yearningly wishing she might recall the past. Too late; too late. She could not stop the course of the rapid disease; she could not prolong his life, or bring back the isolated days he had been condemned to pass, or the weary nights of labour in which he had wasted his delicate frame: the sensitive spirit had been wounded to the quick; the tender heart flung back upon itself. It had been all good for him, no doubt; necessary adjuncts to that process of purification his spirit had been unconsciously undergoing for its coming flight to a better world, but which Mrs. Paradyne could never forgive herself. The deceit she had forced him to observe in regard to his identity had told upon him, there was no doubt, more than any other untoward circumstance: and Mrs. Paradyne had the comfort of knowing that she had helped—on the end. He was, so to say, living a lie; it was altogether wrong, unjustifiable, little better than a fraud on the Head Master; and neither his health nor his natural integrity could bear up against it. And so, Mrs. Paradyne sat by his bedside in silence; she and her aching heart. Now that the relationship was known, people could trace the likeness in their faces; which had once puzzled Miss Brabazon.

And there was another who would come and sit by him, and take his hand; and, closing the door, read to him words from the Book of Life—and that was Dr. Brabazon. The doctor saw the prize that he was losing: he knew now, if he had never known it before, how valuable Mr. Henry's precepts had been in the school, and the peace he contrived to shed around amidst warring elements. Other things were known to the doctor now: the sojourn of his ill-doing son in the house, and the kind friend Mr. Henry had been to him. It seemed to have made Tom into a better man; and he went off to Australia in a spirit of reformation that Mrs. Butter, in a satirical spirit, "hoped would last."

Rose ran in and out at will, bringing him flowers. One day she came to him with a great trouble—Emma had found her love-letters, and she was never, never to write or receive more. Well, Mr. Henry said smiling, as he pushed her pretty hair off her brow, she was certainly getting too old for it.

Emma Brabazon would come sometimes, and lift the little table to the bedside, and make tea at it. She was cheerful now, gay even, for a great care had been removed from her; she would call him Dr. Henry, or Professor Paradyne, and laugh over that back suspicion connected with the gold pencil, now safe in the Head Master's pocket. She confessed to him that she had had great fears, at the time Lord Shrewsbury was shot, that it might be her brother who had fired the pistol. "Not intentionally, to do harm, you know," she added; "but he was often down here, wandering about the plantation, in the hope of meeting me and getting money from me, and it was so easy for him to have picked up the pistol."

"Be at rest," said Mr. Henry. "It was not your brother."