I turned my head away for the moment, with something of an added pang. My boy Bertie!—he was not my son—he did not even look so very, very much younger than I, now-a-days, as he had been used to do; yet he was my boy, kindred in blood and close in heart. Little Derwent stood by, listening up to this moment in silence. Now he spoke.
“Mamma, are you sorry?” cried the child; “our Bertie would not die for nothing, if he did die. Is it for Bertie, because he’s been a brave soldier that you cry? Then how will you do, mamma, when I’m a man?”
How should I do? I clasped my son close in my arms and wept aloud. His father went away from us with a trembling lip, and tears in his eyes. My heart groaned and exulted over the child, who felt himself a knight and champion born. Ah! what should I do when he was a man? What would every one do who loved Derwie, if death and danger came in the way of his duty? But some such men bear charmed lives.
Derwent went away that day to do all that was possible towards ascertaining the truth. We were left alone in the house, Derwie and I. My boy kept by me all day, unfolding to me the stores of his wonderful childish information—what in my pride and admiration I had been used to call Derwie’s gossip. He did not console, nor suggest consolation; but the heart swelled in his child’s bosom to think of some great thing which he had yet to hear of, that Bertie had done. He was entirely possessed with that idea; and by-and-by his enthusiasm breathed itself into his mother also. I began to bear myself proudly in the depths of my grief. “Another for England!” I said in my heart: Ah! more than for England, for humanity, nature, our very race and blood. If Bertie had died to deliver the helpless from yonder torturing demons, could we grudge his life for that cause? So I tried to stifle down my fond hopes for my chosen heir—to put Alice Harley and Estcourt aside out of my mind, that nothing might come between me and our dearest young hero. He was killed. That murderous chariot of war had gone over him, and extinguished those fair and tender prospects out of this world; but not the praise nor the love, which should last for ever.
So I thought, waiting for further tidings, persuading myself that I had no other expectation than to hear that fatal dispatch confirmed—yet cherishing I cannot tell what unspoken, unpermitted secret hopes at the bottom of my heart.
Some days of extreme suspense ensued. Derwent found no satisfaction in London; but remained there in order to get the first news that came. Heavily those blank hours of uncertainty went over us. Lady Greenfield came to Hilfont, and she and I grew friends, as we mingled our tears—friends for the first time. All my other neighbors distressed me with inquiries or condolences. Some wondered I went to church on the next Sunday, and was not in mourning. Nobody would let me alone in my anxiety and grief. I had a visit almost every day from Clara Sedgwick, who came in crying, as if that would console me, and hung upon my neck. I was far too deeply excited to take any comfort out of Clara’s caresses; perhaps, if truth must be told, I was a little bored with demonstrations of affection, to which, uneasy and miserable as I was, I could make so little response.
Then came the day for news—the dread day, when all secret hopes which might be lurking in our hearts were to receive confirmation or destruction, the last being so very much the most probable. I felt assured that if the news was favorable, Derwent would return that day, and waited with a beating heart for the dispatch, which I knew he would not delay a moment in sending me. The news came—alas! such unhappy no-news! The same perplexing, murderous information, simply repeated without a single clue to the mistake, whatever it was. I sank down in my chair, with an overpowering sickness at my heart while I read—sickness of depressed hope, of disappointment of a conviction and certainty which crushed me. The repetition somehow weighed heavily with my imagination. I could no longer either deny or doubt the truth of it. It was all over. There was no more Bertie Nugent of Estcourt now to maintain the name of my fathers; so many hopes and dreams were ended, and such a noble, fresh young life, full of all good and generous impulses, was finished for ever.
“I fear—I fear, Derwie, my darling—I fear it must be true,” said I.
“But what did he do? Bertie did not die for nothing, mamma—is it not in the paper what he did?” cried Derwie.
If it had been, perhaps one could have borne it better. If he had died relieving a distressed garrison, or freeing a band of agonized fugitives, and we had known that he did so, perhaps—perhaps—it might have been easier to bear. I sat down listlessly in the great window of the breakfast-room. Something of the maze of grief came over me. If I had seen him coming through the avenue yonder, crossing the lawn, approaching to me with his pleasant smile, I should not have wondered. Death had separated Bertie from the limits of place and country—he was mysteriously near, though what remained of him might be thousands of miles away.