“Nay, there’s no harm in it. I have never understood it, you know, Janet; none of us have; so little have we understood, that we have not known whether to believe or disbelieve. A short while, Janet, and things may be made plainer to me.”
“How are you feeling to-night?” somewhat abruptly asked Janet, looking askance at his face.
“Never better of late days. It seems as if ease both of mind and body had come to me. I think,” he added, after a few moments’ reflection, “that what George tells me of a prospect opening for him, has imparted this sense of ease. I have thought of him a great deal, Janet; of his wife and child; of what would become of him and of them. He may live yet to be a comfort to his family; to repair to others some of the injury he has caused. Oh, Janet! I am ready to go.”
Janet turned her eyes from the fire, that the rising tears might not be seen. “The Shadow was very light, Thomas,” she repeated. “Whatever it may herald forth, will not be much of a misfortune.”
“A misfortune!—to be taken to my rest!—to the good God who has so loved and kept me here! No, Janet. A few minutes before you came in, I fell into a doze, and I dreamt that I saw Jesus Christ standing there by the window, waiting for me. He had His hand stretched out to me with a smile. So vivid had been the impression, that when I awoke I thought it was reality, and was hastening towards the window before I recollected myself.”
Janet rang the bell for lights to be brought in. Thomas, his elbow resting on the arm of his chair, bent his head upon his hand, and became lost in imagination in the glories that might so soon open to him. Bright forms were flitting around a wondrous throne, golden harps in their hands; and in one of them, her harp idle, her radiant face turned as if watching for one who might be coming, he seemed to recognize Ethel.
George Godolphin meanwhile had gone home, and was sitting with his wife and child. The room was bright with light and fire, and George’s spirits were bright in accordance with it. He had been enlarging upon the prospect offered to him, describing a life in India in vivid colours; had drawn some imaginative pen-and-ink sketches of Miss Meta on a camel’s back; in a gorgeous palanquin; in an open terrace gallery, being fanned by about fifty slaves: the young lady herself looking on at the pictures in a high state of excitement, her eyes sparkling, her cheeks flushed. Maria seemed to partake of the general hilarity. Whether she was really better, or the unexpected return of her husband had infused into her artificial strength, unwonted excitement, certain it is that she was not looking very ill that night: her cheeks had borrowed some of Meta’s colour, and her lips were parted with a smile. The child’s chatter never ceased; it was papa this, papa the other, incessantly. Margery felt rather cross, and when she came in to add some dainty to the substantial tea she had prepared for her master, told him she hoped he would not be for carrying Miss Meta out to the wretched foreign places that were only good for convicts. India and Botany Bay ranked precisely alike in Margery’s estimation.
But tea was done with and removed, and the evening went on, and Margery came again to escort Miss Meta to bed. Miss Meta was not in a hurry to be escorted. Her nimble feet were flying everywhere: from papa at the table, to mamma who sat on the sofa near the fire: from mamma to Margery, standing silent and grim, scarcely deigning to look at the pen-and-ink sketches that Meta exhibited to her.
“I don’t see no sense in ’em, for my part,” slightingly spoke Margery, regarding with dubious eyes one somewhat indistinct representation held up to her. “Those things bain’t like Christian animals. An elephant, d’ye call it? Which is its head and which is its tail?”
Meta whisked off to her papa, elephant in hand. “Papa, which is its head, and which is its tail?”