“No,” he said steadily, “I will never allow it was cruel; it has been sharp and effectual. It couldn’t help being effectual, could it? since I have no alternative. The pity is I am good for so little. No education to speak of.”
“You shall have education—as much as you can set your face to.”
He looked up at her with a little air of surprise, and shook his head. “No,” he said, “not now. I am too old. I must lose no more time. The thing is, that my work will be worth so much less, being guided by no skill. Skill is a beautiful thing. I envy the very scavengers,” he said (who were working underneath the window), “for piling up their mud like that, straight. I should never get it straight.” The poor young fellow was so near tears that he was glad from time to time to have a chance of a feeble laugh, which relieved him. “And that is humble enough! I think much the best thing for me will be to go back to South America. There are people who know me, who would give me a little place where I could learn. Book-keeping can’t be such a tremendous mystery. There’s an old clerk or two of my guardians"—here he paused to swallow down the climbing sorrow—“who would give me a hint or two. And if the pay was very small at first, why, I’m not an extravagant fellow.”
“Are you sure of that?” his confidante said.
He looked at her again, surprised, then glanced at himself and his dress, which was not economical, and reddened and laughed again. “I am afraid you are right,” he said. “I haven’t known much what economy was. I have lived like the other people; but I am not too old to learn, and I should not mind in the least what I looked like, or how I lived, for a time. Things would get better after a time.”
They were standing together near the window, for he had begun to roam about the room as he talked, and she had risen from her chair with one of the sudden movements of excitement. “There will be no need,” she said,—“there will be no need. Something will be found for you at home.”
He shook his head. “You forget it is scarcely home to me. And what could I do here that would be worth paying me for? I must no more be dependent upon kindness. Oh, don’t think I do not feel kindness. What should I have done this miserable day but for you, who have been so good to me—as good as—as a mother, though I had no claim?”
She gave a great cry, and seized him by both his hands. “Oh, lad, if you knew what you were saying! That word to me, that have died for it, and have no claim! Gilchrist, Gilchrist!” she cried, suddenly dropping his hands again, “come here and speak to me! Help me! have pity upon me! For if this is not him, all nature and God’s against me. Come here before I speak or die!”
CHAPTER XXI.
It was young Gordon himself, alarmed but not excited as by any idea of a new discovery which could affect his fate, who brought Miss Bethune back to herself, far better than Gilchrist could do, who had no art but to weep and entreat, and then yield to her mistress whatever she might wish. A quelque chose malheur est bon. He had been in the habit of soothing and calming down an excitable, sometimes hysterical woman, whose accès des nerfs meant nothing, or were, at least, supposed to mean nothing, except indeed nerves, and the ups and downs which are characteristic of them. He was roused by the not dissimilar outburst of feeling or passion, wholly incomprehensible to him from any other point of view, to which his new friend had given way. He took it very quietly, with the composure of use and wont. The sight of her emotion and excitement brought him quite back to himself. He could imagine no reason whatever for it, except the sympathetic effect of all the troublous circumstances in which she had been, without any real reason, involved. It was her sympathy, her kindness for himself and for Dora, he had not the least doubt, which, by bringing her into those scenes of pain and trouble, and associating her so completely with the complicated and intricate story, had brought on this “attack.” What he had known to be characteristic of the one woman with whom he had been in familiar intercourse for so long a period of his life seemed to Harry characteristic of all women. He was quite equal to the occasion. Dr. Roland himself, who would have been so full of professional curiosity, so anxious to make out what it was all about, as perhaps to lessen his promptitude in action, would scarcely have been of so much real use as Harry, who had no arrière pensée, but addressed himself to the immediate emergency with all his might. He soothed the sufferer, so that she was soon relieved by copious floods of tears, which seemed to him the natural method of getting rid of all that emotion and excitement, but which surprised Gilchrist beyond description, and even Miss Bethune herself, whose complete breakdown was so unusual and unlike her. He left her quite at ease in his mind as to her condition, having persuaded her to lie down, and recommended Gilchrist to darken the room, and keep her mistress in perfect quiet.