"And Ella—where is your wife, Trist?" Then Tristram turned his head aside.
"Ella is dead. I buried her two years ago," he returned, sadly. "Poor dear Ella, she never had her good things in this life. 'You have taken me for better or for worse, but there has been no better in it at all,' I often said to her; but she never liked me to say it. Ah, she was the best wife a man could have, but she lies in the cemetery at Melbourne, and little Theo lies with her—I called him after you, old chap. But he never got over the fever. I think it was the loss of the boy that finished Ella, for she never seemed to hold up her head again."
Tristram evidently felt his wife's death acutely, and Thorold, with quiet tact, said a word or two of sympathy and then changed the subject.
Before their brief talk was over, and they went downstairs to join Joanna, Thorold found out that Tristram was utterly unchanged. The handsome ne'er-do-well, as Althea used to call him, was only a little older, and perhaps a trifle rougher, but he was the same irresponsible, happy-go-lucky, easy-tempered Tristram of old.
Shiftless and indolent, he had drifted wherever the tide of circumstance had carried him. Sometimes he had worked and at other times he had starved; but when any good Samaritan stretched out a helping hand and drew him out from the Slough of Despond, he would pull himself together and go on gaily, as though the sun of prosperity had always shone on him. Never were there two brothers so widely dissimilar. But Tristram was no evil-living prodigal, no black sheep, to be dreaded and shunned by all right-minded people; he had loved his wife, and had treated her well, and the poor woman had repaid him with the truest devotion; and now his sister had received him with tears of joy. His sins were the sins of a weak nature, a nature that disliked effort, and chose the softest paths for itself, and which landed him in strange places sometimes.
"I have made an awful muddle of my life," he said, when Thorold questioned him with kindly interest. "Don't you recollect the dear old governor said something of the kind on his death-bed? Upon my word, old chap, I think I am the unluckiest beggar that ever walked this earth. Nothing prospers with me. If I make a little money I somehow contrive to lose it. I am pretty nearly at the end of my tether, I can tell you that?"
"What made you leave Melbourne!" asked Thorold, in his calm, judicial way. Then Tristram shrugged his shoulders and seemed unwilling to answer the question.
"Well, I was a fool," he returned, presently; and he pulled his rough moustache a little fiercely. "The biggest fool out, if you will; but I got into a regular panic. There were two of them lying there, and Bet was seedy, and I got it into my head that the climate of Melbourne did not suit her; and then I thought what a fine thing it would be if Joa could look after her a bit. A child wants a woman's care; and as I smoked my pipe that evening I had such a fit of home-sickness that I was nearly crazy. I had a bit of money put by, and I took our berths the next day; and here we are, old chap, and you must just make the best of us;" and Tristram brought down his hand heavily on his brother's shoulder.
They went downstairs after this, and found Betty awake and sitting on her aunt's lap. The little one was chattering happily to her, and Joanna was fondly stroking the plait of fair hair. "So he says to me, 'You are dad's Betty, are you, my little Miss?' and I said, 'Yes, of course, Mr. Captain, that is what daddie does always call me,' and he laughed in his beard, oh! such a great laugh."
"Why, Bet, you chatterbox, are you talking about your friend the captain?" exclaimed Tristram. "Come here, you monkey, and speak to Uncle Theo;" and Betty came with ready obedience.