She came down to the funeral on Friday, as she had herself appointed, and saw her sons laid in their grave, and again she was entreated to remain. But even little Lilias, whom her father brought forward to aid the pleadings of the others, could not move her. “Honey-sweet!” she said, with a tender light in her eyes; but she had more room for the children when her heart was full of living cares. It was empty now, and there was no room. A few weeks after, she was found dying peaceably in her bed, giving all kinds of directions to her children. “Abel will have your father’s watch, he aye wanted it from a baby—and Lily gets all my things, as is befitting. They will set her up for her wedding. And Dick, my little Dick, that has aye been the little one—who says I was not thinking of Dick? He’s been my prop and my right hand when a’ deserted me. The poor little house and the little bit of land, and a’ his mother has—who should they be for, but Dick?” Thus she died tranquilly, seeing them all round her; and all that was cruel and bitter in the lot of the Bampfyldes came to an end.
CHAPTER XXX.
CONCLUSION.
John Musgrave settled down without any commotion into his natural place in his father’s house. The old Squire himself mended from the day when Nello, very timid, but yet brave to repress the signs of his reluctance, was brought into his room. He played with the child as if he had been a child himself, and so grew better day by day, and got out of bed again, and save for a little dragging of one leg as he limped along, brought no external sign of his “stroke” out of his sick-room. But he wrote no more Monographs, studied no more. His life had come back to him as the Syrian lord in the Bible got back his health after his leprosy—“like the flesh of a little child.” The Squire recovered after a while the power of taking his part in a conversation, and looked more venerable than ever with his faded colour and subdued forces. But his real life was all with little Nello, who by and by got quite used to his grandfather, and lorded it over him as children so often do. When the next summer came, they went out together, the Squire generally in a wheeled chair, Nello walking, or riding by his side on the pony his grandpapa had given him. There was no doubt now as to who was heir. When Randolph came to Penninghame, after spending a day and a half in vain researches for Nello, life having become too exciting at that moment at the Castle to leave any one free to send word of the children’s safety—he found all doubt and notion of danger over for John—- and he himself established in his natural place. Whether the Squire had forgotten everything in his illness, or whether he had understood the story which Mary took care to repeat two or three times very distinctly by his bedside, no one knew. But he never objected to John’s presence, made no question about him—accepted him as if he had been always there. Absolutely as if there had been no breach in the household existence at all, the eldest son took his place; and that Nello was the heir was a thing beyond doubt in any reasonable mind. This actual settlement of all difficulties had already come about when Randolph came. His father took no notice of him, and John, who thought it was his brother’s fault that his little son had been so unkindly treated, found it difficult to afford Randolph any welcome. He did not, however, want any welcome in such circumstances. He stayed for a single night, feeling himself coldly looked upon by all. Mr. Pen, who spent half his time at the Castle, more than any one turned a cold shoulder upon his brother clergyman.
“You felt it necessary that the child should go to school quite as much as I did,” Randolph said, on the solitary occasion when the matter was discussed.
“Yes, but not to any school,” the Vicar said. “I would rather—— ” he paused for a sufficiently strong image, but it was hard to find; “I would rather—have got up at six o’clock every day, and sacrificed everything—rather than have exposed Nello to the life he had there;—and you who are a father yourself.”
“Yes; but my boy has neither a girl’s name nor a girl’s want of courage. He is not a baby that would flinch at the first rough word. I did not know the nature of the thing,” said Randolph, with a sneer. “I have no acquaintance with any but straightforward and manly ways.”
The Vicar followed him out in righteous wrath. He produced from his pocket a hideous piece of pink paper.
“Do you know who sent this?” he asked.
Randolph looked at it, taken aback, and tried to bluster forth an expression of wonder—
“I—how should I know?”