At last the year of the mourning was over. The Lennys, the good colonel and his wife, had come to Markham a few days before, and he was a great godsend to the boys, who were vaguely impressed by the anniversary, but could not but feel the grief a little tedious which had lasted a whole year. They were very glad to go out quite early in the morning with the colonel, not at all, as it were, for their own pleasure, but because his visit was to be short, and the keeper was in despair about the birds which no one shot, and which Sir Augustus was so utterly indifferent about.
“He wouldn’t mind a bit if the place was given up to the poachers,” Harry said. “He says, ‘What’s the good of the game—can’t we buy all we want?’ I think he is cracked on that point.”
“I don’t mind Gus at all in some things,” said Roland. “He’s not half a bad fellow in some things; but he’s an awful muff—no one can deny that.”
“He has not been brought up as you have been,” the colonel said.
While they stole out in the early morning, the old man and the boys, all keen with anticipated pleasure, Gus felt already the first frisson of approaching winter in the sunny haze of September, and had coverings heaped upon him, and dressed by the fire when he got up two hours after. Poor Sir Gus was not at all cheerful. Dolly’s refusal had not indeed broken his heart, but it had disappointed him very much, and he did not know what he was to do to make life tolerable now that this expedient had failed. The anniversary oppressed him more or less, not with grief, but with a sense that, after all, the huge change and advancement that had come to him with his father’s death had not perhaps brought all he expected it to bring. To be Sir Augustus, and have a fine property and more money than he knew how to spend, and a grand position, had not increased his happiness. On the contrary, it seemed to him that the first day he had come to Markham, when the children had given him luncheon and showed so much curiosity about him as a relation, had been happier than any he had known since. He too had been full of lively curiosity and expectation, and had believed himself on the verge of a very happy change in his life. But he did not anticipate the death or the trouble to others which were the melancholy gates by which he had to enter upon his higher life. When he had dressed, he sat over the fire thinking of it on that bright September morning. He was half angry because he could not get rid of the feeling of the anniversary. After all, there was nothing more sad in the fifteenth of September than in any other day. But Lady Markham, no doubt, would shut herself up, and Alice look at him as if, somehow or other, he was the cause of it; and they would speak in subdued tones, and it would be a kind of sin to do or say anything amusing. Gus could not but feel a little irritation thinking of the long day before him, and then of the long winter that was coming. And all the prophets said it was to be a hard winter. The holly-trees in the park, where they grew very tall, were already crimson with berries. Already one or two nights’ frost had made the geraniums droop. A hard winter! The last had been said to be a mild one. If this was worse than that, Sir Gus did not know what he should do.
The day, however, passed over more easily than he thought. His aunt, Mrs. Lenny, was a godsend to him as the colonel was to the boys. She made him talk of nothing but “the island” all the day long. It was long since she had left it. She wanted to know about everybody, the old negroes, the governor’s parties, the regiments that had been there. On her side she had a hundred stories to tell of her own youth, which looked all the brighter for being so far in the distance. They took a drive together in the middle of the day, basking in the sunshine, and as the evening came on they had a roaring fire, and felt themselves in the tropics.
“Shouldn’t you like to go back?” Mrs. Lenny said. “If I were as rich as you, Gus, I’d have my estate there, like in the old days, and there I’d spend my winters. With all the money you’ve got, what would it matter whether it paid or not? You could afford to keep everything up as in the old days.”
“But there’s the sea. I would do it in a moment,” Gus said, his brown face lighting up, “but for the sea.”
“You would soon get used to the sea—it’s nothing. You would get over the sickness in a day, and then it’s beautiful. Take me with you one time, Gus, there’s a darling. I’d like to see it all again before I die.”
“I’ll think of it,” Gus said: and indeed for the next twenty-four hours he thought of nothing else.