CHAPTER IX.
The following Saturday turned out to be a misty November morning. Towards noon the fog lifted, and at half-past one, when Dame Hursey prepared to start to keep her appointment with her son, it was tolerably clear, but the old wool-gatherer, who was as weather-wise as John Shelley himself, shook her head as she scanned the horizon from the door of her miserable cottage, and muttered to herself she doubted the fog would come on worse than ever at sunset.
As this was the first time she had seen her son for twelve or thirteen years, and would probably be the last, seeing that he was going back to Australia, probably never to return, at least in her lifetime, Dame Hursey regarded the occasion as a festive one, and had taken a holiday in honour of it. Her morning had been spent in cleaning her miserable cottage, in the faint hope that her son might be persuaded to come home and spend the evening with her. In this hope all her wool-gatherings had been taken upstairs instead of lying about the floor and corners of the kitchen, as they usually did; the floor had been scrubbed, a fire was lighted, two rickety armchairs drawn up to it, and a cup and saucer, a mug, and two or three plates—Dame Hursey’s stock of crockery—placed on the table. She dispensed with dinner, and contenting herself with a piece of bread and cheese, reserved two red herrings for her tea on her return with her son.
Then she dressed herself in her Sunday dress, not without some qualms lest the fog should turn to rain. Even if it did, on such an occasion as this she must wear her best things, so she put on her black stuff dress, a black and white plaid shawl, and a bonnet that might have come out of the ark, judging from its antique shape, and which, to Dame Hursey’s pride, was ornamented with some dirty old artificial flowers. Thus attired, and having made up the fire and left the kettle on the hob, she locked up her hut, put the key in her pocket, and providing herself with a gigantic cotton umbrella, to answer the purpose of a walking-stick as well as in case of rain, she set out for Mount Harry.
Though Dame Hursey knew all the short cuts, it was more than an hour’s walk from her house to the top of Mount Harry, but the old woman was longing to see her son again, so she started in good time, and reached the spot a quarter of an hour before he did, though he was punctual. The fog was rolling up again, as the old wool-gatherer had predicted, and, accustomed as her black eyes were to piercing the mists which so often wrap those rounded hills like a damp clinging garment, her son was close upon her before she saw his form, looming like a gigantic grey figure close beside her. It was twelve years and a half since they had met, and George Hursey was very much altered in appearance since, in the character of John Smith, carpenter on board the French yacht Hirondelle, he had laid the baron’s little daughter on John Shelley’s doorstep; but for all that his mother declared she would have recognised him in a crowd.
“You’ll come home and have a cup of tea and a chat, George, after all these years, won’t you?” said the old dame, gazing with pride and affection on her ne’er-do-well son.
“No, mother, no; I might be recognised, and I don’t want to be arrested for making off with a child, before I go back to my own wife and children.”
“The child is safe enough, if you mean the child you left on John Shelley’s doorstep thirteen years ago come next June.”
George Hursey gave a sigh of relief, for many a nightmare had that innocent baby, which, for aught he knew to the contrary, might have perished from cold or exposure through his fault, given him.
“John Shelley took it in then, as I thought he would?”