“I won’t write for it yet,” said Arthur. “I’d better wait till we get to Greenwell, and see how things turn out I left it with my clothes and other things with a friend to send after me.”
“Just so,” said the farmer. “Oh, as for that, it’ll be time enough.”
An hour or two later saw Arthur, in company with his new friend, mounted in the light box-cart of the latter, and driving, though at a sober pace, for the roads were very slippery, in the direction of the little town of Greenwell. It was a long drive. They stopped towards midday at a little roadside inn for some refreshment in the shape of bread-and-cheese and beer, and then jogged on again. It was not a luxurious mode of travelling; still, it was much better than tramping through the snow, and Arthur’s days of roughing it had taught him the useful lesson of being thankful for small boons. But as the early winter dusk fell it grew colder and colder, and Arthur shivered, though he had a good thick coat, and the farmer had given him a plentiful share of the rough horse-cloth, which did duty for a carriage rug.
“Christmas Eve,” he said, after a long silence, hardly aware that he was speaking aloud.
“Ay so,” said his companion, “the years they comes, and the years they goes. ’Tis many a Christmas Eve and Christmas Day as I mind. ‘Peace on earth, goodwill to men,’ parson tells us. They’ve been a-tellin’ it a sight o’ Christmases, seems to me, but we’re a long way off it still, I’m afeard.”
“I’m afraid so,” said Arthur with a sigh.
And then his thoughts wandered off again to his home. Lettice would hear those same words to-morrow morning. How would they strike her? Was she not wrong, quite wrong? was the question that came over and over again for the thousandth time in his mind. Could it be showing true honour to their dead parents to persist in the course she was doing—a course setting at defiance the Divine injunction? Nay, even allowing they, or their father rather, had been injured, unfairly treated, was there not Divine command for such cases, too? “Forgive, as ye would be forgiven,” “unto seventy times seven,” were the words that floated about before the boy’s eyes, illuminated, as it were, on the ever-darkening sky in front of him. And who was it they were refusing to forgive? One who had never injured them, one who had generously taken upon him responsibilities and risks he was in no way called upon to trouble himself with.
“Ah, yes,” thought Arthur sadly, “that has been his crime in her eyes—his very goodness.” And somehow he felt less unhappy and perplexed when he allowed himself to recognise this than when he strove, as he had thought himself bound to do, against his better judgment, to think Lettice right, to accept the arguments she had so plausibly brought to bear upon him.
“She must be wrong,” he thought. “And if I had been older and wiser, or, at least, more courageous, I might have made her care to see it. But what right have I to speak, miserable failure that I am? I can only do what I am doing—be faithful and loyal to her, even if she is mistaken, and do my utmost to lessen the burden;” and, with another sigh, Arthur shook himself out of his reverie.
How cold it was growing!