And so was Mr. Ned established home again, to be provided for by his father until he should obtain some means of self-support. In this task his father offered no assistance, being cautious against vouching for a person hitherto so untrustworthy; and it soon became evident that Ned was not very vigorously prosecuting the task himself. He had the excuse that it was a bad time for the purpose, the country being so unsettled in the expectation of continued war. And he was content to remain an idle charge upon his father's bounty, a somewhat neglected inmate of the house, his comings and goings not watched or inquired into. His father rarely had a word for him but of curt and formal greeting. His mother found little more to say to him, and that in a shy reserved manner. Margaret gave him no speeches, but sometimes a look of careless derision and contempt, which must have caused him often to grind his teeth behind his mask of humility. Philip's courtesy to him was distinctly chilly; while Tom treated him rather with the indifferent amiability of a new and not very close acquaintance, than with any revival of old brotherly familiarity. I shared Phil's doubts upon Ned's spiritual regeneration, and many people in the town were equally skeptical. But there were enough of those credulous folk that delight in the miraculous, who believed fully in this marvellous conversion, and never tired of discussing the wonder. And so Ned went about, posing as a brand snatched from the burning, to the amusement of one-half the town, the admiration of the other half, and the curiosity of both.
"'Tis all fudge, says I," quoth lean old Bill Meadows, the watchman at the Faringfield wharves. "His story and his face don't hitch. He declares he was convarted by the Methodies, and he talks their talk about salvation and redemption and the like. But if he really had religion their way, he'd wear the face o' joy and gladness. Whereas he goes about looking as sober as a covenanter that expected the day of judgment to-morrow and knew he was predestinated for one O' the goats. Methodie convarts don't wear Presbyterian faces. Ecod, sir" (this he said to Phil, with whom he was on terms of confidence), "he's got it in his head that religion and a glum face goes together; and he thereby gives the lie to his Methodie convarsion."
Ned was at first in rather sore straits for a companion, none of his old associates taking well to his reformation. He had to fall back upon poor Cornelius, who was always the most obliging of men and could never refuse his company or aught else to any tolerable person that sought it. But in a week or so Ned had won back Fanny to her old allegiance, and she, in the kindness of her heart, and in her pity that the poor repentant fellow should be so misunderstood, his amendment so doubted, gave him as much of her time as he asked for. She walked with him, rode with him, and boated with him. This was all greatly to my cost and annoyance; for, ever since she had so gently commiserated my loss of Margaret, I had learned more and more to value her sweet consolation, rely upon her sympathy in all matters, and find serenity and happiness in her society. It had come to be that two were company, three were none—particularly when the third was Ned. So, if she would go about with him, I left her to go with him alone; and I suffered, and pined, and raged inwardly, in consequence. 'Twas this deprivation that taught me how necessary she was to me; and how her presence gave my days half their brightness, my nights half their beauty, my taste of everything in life half its sweetness. Philip was unreservedly welcome to Madge now; I wondered I had been so late in discovering the charms of Fanny.
But one day I noticed that a coolness had arisen between her and Ned; a scarce evident repulsion on her part, a cessation of interest on his. This was, I must confess, as greatly to my satisfaction as to my curiosity. But Fanny was no more a talebearer than if she had been of our sex; and Ned was little like to disclose the cause intentionally: so I did not learn it until by inference from a passage that occurred one night at the King's Arms' Tavern.
Poor Philip, avoided and ignored by Madge, who had not yet relented, was taking an evening stroll with me, in the soothing company of the pedagogue; when we were hailed by Ned with an invitation to a mug of ale in the tavern. Struck with the man's apparent wistfulness for company, and moved by a fellow feeling of forlornness, Philip accepted; and Cornelius, always acquiescent, had not the ill grace to refuse. So the four of us sat down together at a table.
"I wish I might offer you madeira, gentlemen; or punch, at least," said Ned regretfully, "but you know how it is. I'm reaping what I sowed. Things might be worse. I knew 'em worse in London—before I turned over a new leaf."
The mugs being emptied, and the rest of us playing host in turn, they were several times replenished. Ned had been drinking before he met us; but this was not apparent until he began to show the effect of his potations while the heads of us his companions were still perfectly clear. It was evident that he had not allowed his conversion to wean him from this kind of indulgence. The conversation reverted to his time of destitution in London.
"Such experiences," observed Cornelius, "have their good fruits. They incline men to repentance who might else continue in their evil ways all their lives."
"Yes, sir; that's the truth!" cried Ned. "If I'd had some people's luck—but it's better to be saved than to make a fortune—although, to be sure, there are fellows, rascals, too, that the Lord seems to take far better care of than he does of his own!"
Mr. Cornelius looked a little startled at this. But the truth was, I make no doubt, that the pretence of virtue, adopted for the purpose of regaining the comforts of his father's house, wore heavily upon Ned; that he chafed terribly under it sometimes; and that this was one of the hours when, his wits and tongue loosened by drink, he became reckless and allowed himself relief. He knew that Philip, Cornelius, and I, never tattled. And so he cast the muzzle of sham reformation from his mouth.