Three weeks later the good people of Duxley were treated to a delightful sensation. Mr. Cope, Junior, had run away with the daughter of Mr. Moggs, the confectioner, and Mr. Cope, Senior, had threatened to cut his son off with the well-known metaphorical shilling.
The latest news of young Mr. Cope is, that he is living in furnished apartments in a cheap suburb of London. The late Miss Moggs, her plumpness notwithstanding, has developed into a Tartar. They have six children. Mr. Cope’s income is exactly two hundred a-year, left him by his mother. His father will not give him a penny, and he is either too lazy, or too incompetent, to attempt to add to his means by a little honest work. He is very stout and very short of breath. When he has any money he spends his time in a neighbouring billiard-room, smoking a short pipe and drinking half-and-half, and watching other men play. When he has no money he stops at home and rocks the cradle, and listens to his wife’s reproaches. Mrs. Cope vows that she will buy a mangle and make her husband turn it, and try whether she cannot shame him into work that way. And all this is the result of eating pastry and being waited upon by a pretty girl.
After the trial was over, Nell, by means of some speciously-concocted tale, contrived to cozen General St. George out of twenty pounds. With this she disappeared, and was never either seen or heard of in Duxley or its neighbourhood again.
During the time that Lionel and his wife were abroad the General went with his friend, Major Beauchamp, to Madeira, and wintered there.
It had been Lionel’s intention to stay abroad for about three years. But as it fell out, he and Edith were back at Park Newton by the end of twelve months, being brought thither by the expectation of an all-important event. Lionel has not since then left home for more than a month at a time. So full of painful memories was Park Newton to him, that it was only by Edith’s persuasion that he was induced to settle there at all. But years have come and gone since then, and nothing would now induce him to live anywhere else. Whatever gloomy associations might otherwise have clung to the old house have been exorcised long ago by the merry laughter of children. It was difficult at first for the Echoes of that murder-haunted roof to bring themselves to mimic the soft syllables of childhood, but when one little stranger after another came to teach them, then their voices, rusty and creaky at first through long disuse, gradually won back to themselves a long-forgotten sweetness; and now the Echoes follow the children wherever they go, and all the grim old pile is musical with the laughter and songs and free joyous shouts of childhood. Many a time they have a bout together—the children and the Echoes—trying which of them can make the more noise; and then the children call to the Echoes and bid them come out of their hiding-places and show themselves in the dusky twilight; but the Echoes only laugh back their answer, and are ever too timid to let themselves be seen.
Who, of all people in the world, should be the children’s primest favourite and slave but General St. George? His heart is in the nursery, and there he spends hours every day. He “keeps shop” with them, he plays at soldiers with them, he is their horse, their roaring lion, their wild man of the woods. It is certainly amusing to see the old warrior, whose very name was once a word of terror among the lawless hill-tribes of the far East see him led about by one boy by means of a piece of string tied round his arm, and while another youthful scapegrace deafens you with the noise of a drum, to watch him imitate, with dangling paws, the uncouth gracefulness of a dancing bear. There can be no doubt on one point—that the old soldier enjoys himself quite as much as the children do.
After his year’s imprisonment was at an end—to which mitigated punishment Janvard was condemned, in consideration of his having acted as witness for the Crown—he and his sister went over to Switzerland, and opened an hotel there at one of the chief centres of tourist travel. There, not long ago, he was encountered by Lionel. Smirking, bowing, and rubbing his hands, Janvard went up to him, with a request that Monsieur Dering would do him the honour of stopping at his hotel. But Lionel would have nothing to do with him, and when Janvard could be made to comprehend this, his face became a study of mortification and surprise. His feelings, such as they were, were evidently hurt. He never could be made to understand why Monsieur Dering had refused so positively to take up his quarters at the Lion d’Or.
In a world that is full of permutation and change, there are happily a few things that change not. One of these is the friendship between Lionel and Tom, which neither time nor absence, nor the growth of other interests has power to alter in the least. When they both happen to be in Midlandshire at the same time, a week never passes without their seeing more or less of each other, and between their wives there is almost as firm a friendship as there is between themselves. Four people more united, more happy in each other’s society, it would be impossible to find.
It was only last summer, during the long spell of hot weather, that Edith and Jane, with their youngsters, went over to Gatehouse Farm together, for the sake of the fresh sea breezes that seem to blow perpetually round the old house. They were sitting one day on the broad yellow sands, idling through the glowing afternoon, with their embroidery and a novel, when one of Jane’s little girls happened to fall and hurt her finger. She began to cry, and Edith’s little boy was by her side in a moment.
“Don’t cry,” he said, as he stooped and kissed her. “I will marry you when I grow to be a big man.”