‘But, dear mamma, how could your discretion serve when you did not know?’ said Mary. ‘And, poor fellow! he is so,—so——’
‘So very devoted to some one else that he could not even take the trouble to look at Mrs. Rich,—such a pretty woman, too!’ said Mrs. Westbury. ‘It seems to me, my dear, that you have made the very most of your time.’
‘Oh, mamma, how dreadful that you should say so!’ cried Mary, turning round again with flaming, crimson cheeks. ‘Surely, surely, you know me better! And Ben, poor fellow! has so much to think of. Nothing could be further from his mind. I have been their sister all their lives; it would be hard if I could not try to be a little comfort to him now.’
‘My dear, if he needs comfort, I am sure I have no objection,’ said Mrs. Westbury, with a smile; and just then Mary’s maid came into the room, and the conversation came to an end. It was this dreadful practical turn, which was in the old Renton blood, which bewildered the less energetic members of the family. But it was wonderful to see how Ben and Aunt Lydia got on at dinner. He told her more about his work, and what he had been doing, in half-an-hour than the others had extracted from him in twenty-four. And the Renton spirit sparkled in Mrs. Westbury’s eyes as she listened. ‘Even if you had not made a penny, Ben,’ she said, in her energetic way, ‘I should be so much more pleased that you had been making some use of your talents than just hanging on in the old way at home.’
‘But I have made a penny,’ Ben said, with a kindred glance;—he was pleased with the thought, which gave Mary a momentary disgust;—‘though it has cost more than it is worth in the making,’ he added, in a lower tone. And then his cousin forgave, and was sorry for poor Ben. It was dangerous work for Mary, especially as there was still the excitement of the return expedition across the river, to convey Mrs. Westbury home to look forward to. But, fortunately, there was no one visible about The Willows when that moment came;—nothing but serene moonlight, white and peaceable, unbroken by any shadow or voice but their own, was on the gleaming river. And the Rev. Laurence Westbury standing on the bank in his clerical coat,—who had been at school when Ben left Renton,—to take his mother home, and bid the new-comer welcome; and then the silent progress back down the stream in the moonlight. It surprised Mary afterwards to think how little Ben and she had said to each other, and yet what perfectly good company he had been. And thus they went on, those curious, rapid days.
CHAPTER XI.
ALL HOME.
Laurie arrived on the Friday, coming in, in his usual unexpected way, through the window, when they were all in the drawing-room after dinner. The brothers had met in town, where Ben had paused for a day on his way to Renton, so that their greeting was not mingled with any of those remarks on changed appearance and unexpected signs of age which are general after a long absence. But when they stood thus together for the first time for seven years, the difference between old things and new became more perceptible to the bystanders. The surroundings were so completely the same as of old that any variation from the past became more clear to them. The same lamps, shaded for their mother’s sake; the same brilliant spot of light upon the tea-table, where the china and silver glittered; Mrs. Renton lying on the same sofa, in the same attitude, covered with the same Indian shawl; the same soft odour of mignonette and heliotrope, and earth and dew, stealing in at the great open window; even the same moths, or reproductions of the same, making wild circles about the lamp. ‘And Mary, I think, is the very same,’ Laurie said, looking at her with true brotherly kindness. But ‘the boys’ were not the same. Of the two it was Laurie who looked the elder. He was just thirty, but the hair was getting thin on the top of his head, and his face was more worn than it had any right to be. Ben had broadened, almost imperceptibly, but still enough to indicate to the bystander that the first slim outline of youth was over. But Laurie, though he had not expanded, had aged even in the lines of his face; and then he had grown a little careless, like the society into which he had cast himself. He was dusty with his walk, and his velvet morning-coat looked strange and wild beside Ben’s correct evening costume. Lazy Laurence still; but with all the difference between sanguine youth and meditative manhood. Mary, however, was the only one of the party who was troubled by the mystery of Laurie’s subdued tone. Mrs. Renton was not given to speculation, and Ben was occupied by his own affairs to the exclusion of all inquiry into those of others. Both mother and brother took it for granted that Laurie was just as it was natural he should be. Only Mary,—sisterly, womanly, anxious always to know how it was,—watched him with a sympathetic eye.
‘Well! here we are at home once more, old fellow,’ said Laurie, throwing himself into an easy chair near the window, when the mother had been safely conveyed up-stairs.
‘Yes, a home that always looks the same,’ said Ben. ‘I am not so sure as I used to be of the good of that. It makes one feel doubly the change in one’s self.’
‘These are his Yankee notions,’ said Laurie. ‘I suppose he has given up primogeniture, and Church and State, and everything. But Mary is an orthodox person who will set us all right.’