This was all the evidence on the subject from which a judgment could be formed. Randolph Musgrave (who told no one) had seen, in his own words, a something, a some one, whose face he did not see, but who suggested John to him so strongly that his very heart seemed to stop beating—then disappeared. And Lady Stanton from the window of the carriage, driving past, saw a face, which was John Musgrave’s face grown older and worn, with hair that was slightly grey, instead of the brown curls of former years, and which disappeared too in the twinkling of an eye, and being searched for, could be found no more. What was it?—an apparition conjured up by their interest or their fears? or John Musgrave, in his own person, come home?
CHAPTER XXIX.
NELLO’S JOURNEY.
Randolph Musgrave drove from the door of his father’s house with a sigh of relief, yet of anxiety. He had not done what he meant to do, and affairs were more critical than when he went to Penninghame a few weeks before; but it was something at least to be out of the troubled atmosphere, and he had arranged in his own mind what he should do, which was in its way a gain, as soon as the breath was out of the old man’s body,—but when would that be? It was not to be desired, Randolph said to himself piously, that his father should linger long; his life was neither of use nor comfort to any one, and no pleasure, no advantage to himself. To lie there speechless, motionless, as much shut out of all human intercourse as if he were already in his coffin—what could any one desire but that, as soon as might be, it should come to an end?
He did not pay very much attention to his small companion. For the moment, Nello, having been thus secured and brought within his power, had no further importance, and Randolph sat with knitted brows pondering all he was to do, without any particular reference to the child. Nello had left the Castle easily enough; he had parted from Mary and from Lilias without any lingering of emotion, getting over it as quickly as possible. When it came to that he was eager to be off, to set out into the world. The little fellow’s veins were full of excitement; he expected to see, he did not know what wonderful things, what objects of entrancing interest, as soon as he got outside the little region where everything was known to him. “Good-bye, Mary—good-bye, Lily,” he said, waving his hand. He had his own little portmanteau with his name on it, a new little silver watch in his pocket—what could child want more? Lily, though she was his sister, was not a sensation like that watch. He took it out, and turned it round and round, and opened the case, and wound it up—he had wound it up twice this morning already, so that one turn of the key was all that was practicable. Nothing at the Castle, nothing in the society of Lily, was equal to this. He compared his watch with the clock at the druggist’s in the village and found it fast: he compared it with the clock at the station and found that slow. He did not take any notice of his uncle, nor his uncle of him; each was indifferent, though partly hostile, to the other. Randolph was at his ease because he had this child, this troublesome atom, who might do harm though he could do no good, in his power; but Nello was at his ease through pure indifference. He was not at the moment frightened of his uncle, and no other sentiment in regard to him had been developed in his mind. As calm as if Randolph had been a cabbage, Nello sat by his side, and looked at his watch. The watch excited him, but his uncle——. Thus they went on, an unsympathetic pair. Nello stood about on the platform and looked at everything, while Randolph took the tickets. He was slightly hurt to hear that a half-ticket was still enough for himself, and moved away at once to the other side of the station, where the locomotive enthralled him. He stood and gazed at it with transport. What he would have given to have travelled there with the man who drove it, and left Uncle Randolph behind! But still Nello took his place in the train with much indifference to Uncle Randolph. He was wholly occupied with what was going on before and about him: the rush across country, trees and fields flying by, and the stations where there was always something new, the groups of people standing about, the rush of some for the train, the late arrival just as the doors were shut of those who were too late. These last made Nello laugh, their blank looks were so funny—and yet he was sorry for them; for what a thing it must be, he thought, to see other people go rushing out over the world to see everything, while you yourself were left dull at home! He remembered once himself being left with Martuccia in the still, deserted house when all the others had gone to the festa; how he thought the day would never end—and Martuccia thought so too. This made him sorry, very sorry, for the people who had lost their train. It did not occur to Nello that it might be no festa he was going to, or they were going to. What could any one want more than the journey itself? If you wearied of seeing the trains rush past, and counting the houses, now on one side, now on another, there was the endless pleasure of dashing up to one station after another, where Nello could look down with fine superiority on the people who were not going, on the children above all, who looked up envious, and envied him, he felt sure.
By and by, however, though he would not confess it to himself, the delights of the journey began to pall: his little eyes grew fatigued with looking, and his little mind with the continuous spectacle of those long, flying breadths of country; and even the stations lost their charm. He would have liked to have somebody to talk to, and cast one or two wistful glances to see whether Uncle Randolph was practicable, but found no encouragement in that countenance, pre-occupied, and somewhat lowering by nature, which appeared now and then in the wavering of the train, over the newspaper his uncle was reading. What a long time it took to read that paper! How it crackled when it was opened out! How tired Nello grew of seeing it opposite to him! And he began to grow cramped with sitting; his limbs wanted stretching, his mind wanted change; and he began to be hungry. Randolph, who scorned the poor refreshments of the railway, and thought it better to wait for his meal till he reached home, did not think of the difference between himself and the child. They travelled on and on through the dulness of the afternoon. Nello, who had been so excited, felt disposed to sleep, but was too proud to yield to it; and then he began to think of his sister and the home he had left. It is natural, it is selfish, to remember home when we miss its comforts: but if that is not of the higher nature of love, it is yet the religion of the weak, and not despised by the great Succourer who bids men call upon Him in time of trouble. Nello’s heart, when he began to feel tired and famished, recurred, with a pathetic trust in the tenderness and in the certainty of the well-being that abode there, to his home.
When they stopped at a lively, bustling junction to change their direction, things mended a little. Nello ventured to buy himself a cake, his uncle not interfering, as they waited. “You will spoil your stomach with that sweet stuff,” Randolph said, but he allowed the child to munch. And they had half-an-hour to wait, which of itself was something. Nello walked about, imitating Randolph’s longer stride, though he did not accompany his uncle; and though he felt forlorn and very small among the crowd, marched about and looked at everything as the gentlemen did, recovering his spirits a little. And suddenly, with a great glow of pleasure all over him, Nello spied, among the strangers who were hurrying to and fro, a face he had seen before; it is true it was only the face of the countryman who had accosted him in the Chase, and with whom he had but a small acquaintance, but even this was something in the waste of the unknown that surrounded him. The boy rushed up to him with a gleam of joy upon his small countenance. “I say, have you come from—home?”
“Yes, my little gentleman,” said Wild Bampfylde. “I’m taking a journey like you, but I like best to tramp on my two legs. I’m going no farther in your carriages, that give you the cramp. I reckon you’re tired too.”
“A little,” said Nello; “but that’s no matter. What have you in your basket?—is it another rabbit? I gave mine to Lily. They would not let me bring it, though I wanted to bring it. School, you know,” said the boy, seriously, “is not like home. You have to be just like as if you were grown up there. Little—you cannot help being little; but you have to be like as if you were grown up there.”
“Ay, ay, that’s the way to take it,” said the countryman, looking down with a twinkle in his eye, half smiling, half sad, at the small creature beside him. “The thing is to be a man, and to mind that you must stand up like a man, whatever happens. If one hits you, you must hit him again, and be sure not to cry.”
“Hit me!” said Nello—“cry? Ah, you do not know the kind of school I am going to—for you are not a gentleman,” he added, looking with superb condescension at his adviser. “I like you just the same,” said Nello, “but you are not a gentleman, are you? and how can you know?”