'Oh! you have heard of our trouble about him?' returns Harborough cheerfully. 'Well, to tell truth, the young beggar did give us a fright! but he is as right as a trivet again now, or at least he is on the high road to be so; but he had a near shave of it, poor little man! not one of us thought he would pull through. Andrew Clark himself did not. We all of us—his mother, I, everybody—thought he was going to give us the slip; but not a bit of it. I never saw such a boy! There he is, shouting and kicking up such a row, they can scarcely keep him in bed; and eat—he would eat an old shoe—he would eat you or me if we gave him the chance.'
He ends with a jovial, if not very wise, laugh; but Talbot does not echo it, though Heaven knows that he is glad enough at heart for any expression of mirth.
'You must run down and see him,' pursues the other hospitably; 'it is a long time since you have paid us a visit. Come now, fix a day; there is no time like the present.' 'You forget,' replies Talbot, with an embarrassment which, however, is not perceived by his interlocutor, 'that I am not one of those lucky fellows like you whose time is their own. I cannot take a holiday whenever I choose; you must remember that mine is just over.'
'Stuff and nonsense!' rejoins Betty's husband, with rough good humour. 'Do not tell me that they keep you as tight as that! I know better! I will take no excuses; only two days ago Betty was saying to me what an age it was since we had seen anything of you.'
Before he can hinder it, Talbot's jaw drops. Betty had said so? Betty? Has sorrow then robbed her of her wits?
'By the bye,' continues Harborough, correcting himself, and happily ignorant of the effect produced by his last words, 'it was the other way up; it was I who said so to her. But it is all the same thing; she will be delighted to see you. She will never forgive me if I let you escape us this time; and the boy, you positively must come and help us to keep that boy in order. I never saw such a boy!' (beginning again to chuckle).
It is not without very considerable difficulty, not without some sacrifice of truth, some vague promises, that Talbot at length succeeds in making his escape without having tied himself down to any special day for making his appearance at that house from whose doors the wife has warned him off with as great an eagerness as—it cannot be greater than—the husband now shows to force him into them. As long as he is in Harborough's company, the necessity for baffling his friend's stupid urgencies, the awkwardness of rebutting civilities so well meant, prevent him from realising the full intensity of his relief. But when he has reached his own rooms, when he is alone, then indeed he knows the weight of the burden that has rolled from his shoulders. The boy is not dead; riotously alive rather. Thank God—thank God for that! And she is no longer kneeling beside him, no longer out of breath for company. He may drive away for ever from before his eyes that hideous vision of her as he had last seen her, and which has been for fourteen days poisoning sleep and waking for him. He may drive it away; and not only so, but he may replace it by any other vision he chooses. Any other! In the first stupefaction of that thought—for joy has her stupefaction as well as pain—he covers his face with both hands, as if, by shutting out all other objects, he could the better bring that astounding change home to his mazed brain and his leaping heart. He is free! He has to say the word over many, many times to himself before he can at all take in its full significance. He is free!—free, too, with a freedom that has been given to him, that has been gained by no violent bursting of bars, and which therefore he may taste with that fulness of joy that those alone can feel who have long lain fast bound in misery and iron. He has been so long a bondman, the irons have cut so deeply into his flesh, that on first coming out into God's good light he staggers blindly as one drunk.
He walks to the window and looks out. The bells are ringing to afternoon church, and the congregations are passing staidly by. He looks out at them all, with a joyous smile at the endimanché shop-boys, each with his sweetheart on his arm; at the little children holding fathers' and mothers' hands. He, too, may have a sweetheart. He, too, may be blessed with little children. There are none of the possibilities which make life lovely to other men, to which he, too, may not aspire. The happy tears crowd into his eyes.
From the window he walks to his bureau, and out of a secret drawer takes a tiny tissue-paper parcel, and from it carefully extracts its contents. They consist of only one sprig of dried lavender, thieved from the garden of the little Red House, and at which for five months he has not dared to look. He may look at it now; may pass it lovingly across his lips; may inhale whatever yet lingers of its innocent cottage sweetness. There is enough still left to recall the parent-tree. He may see again that spreading flowered bush; may see again Minky galloping like a little gray whirlwind across the lawn; may hear again the parrot swearing in the cook's voice, and sleepily clacking with his black tongue in the sunshine; may watch the eleven birds—are there still eleven, he wonders?—hopping and quarrelling and twittering up and down upon his ladder; may see Jacob and the mowing-machine; and—her. Can any bodily eyes show her to him much more plainly than his spirit's eyes see her now, summoned up before him by that delicate, homely perfume, that is to him so indissolubly associated with her?—see her as he saw her last in the walled Manor garden, standing among the moon-shimmering white gladioli, and saying to him with farewell smile and wavering voice:
'Since you are so determined to go downhill, I suppose I dare not say that I hope our paths will ever meet again.'