AS A LITTLE CHILD.
The day after the episode with Pollie Captain Grant’s letter duly arrived.
He was only too delighted to think that his suggestion had borne fruit with his old friend.
“It’s just settled that the Slains Castle will leave Peterhead on the twenty-eighth of this month,” he wrote. “That will give you plenty of time. But as we don’t touch anywhere in Great Britain, you will have to join me here. Don’t take the long railway journey. Like a wise man, come as far as Aberdeen in the steamer, and then you have not much further to travel. As for the hundred pounds, I tell you, my dear fellow, that we don’t intend to be away longer than one year, and that is the precise figure I should name. But I’ll go on to add that if we should happen to be a little longer, you shall not be charged a shilling more. Persuade Mrs. Challoner to come north with you and to bring the boy, and then she’ll see you fairly aboard, and will note what snug quarters you’ll have, and be able to see you with her mind’s eye all the time you are away. My wife hopes she will come.”
“You see there is no doubt that you are to go, Charlie,” said Mrs. Challoner. “Everything has worked to that end without one hitch. You are to go, because you are to come back strong and well. It is clearly the will of God that you go. I am so glad that my plans have been carried out beyond my own power. If it had all been my planning, I might have doubted afterwards.”
“But, Lucy,” said the young husband, his pleasant frank face shining with the mysterious light which often illumines the countenances which have just been bravely turned to confront the darkness of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, “I own, with you, that it does seem to be God’s will, but we must not think so now, unless we can continue to think so whatever be the result. Let us say together solemnly, ‘God’s will be done: not our will, but His.’”
And there was a little silence.
Lucy resolutely refused to consider the Grants’ invitation to Peterhead. She warmly seconded their suggestion that Charlie should travel in the snug, well-attended saloon of the magnificent coasting steamer rather than in the train. She refused to listen to his plea, that unless she would come with him this mode of travel would part them a day or two sooner than if he went by rail. She even nerved herself to say that when a matter of a year’s separation was in hand, what could a day more or less signify? It would be best that they should part in their own home, where life could go straight on, and she could set to work at once. It would be dreadful to come back to the house alone. (“Pollie would have a welcome for you,” interposed young Challoner.) Besides, who knew whether she and little Hugh might not prove to be the very worst of sailors, and then Charlie would go off quite unhappy, thinking of the misery of their return journey.
In all these arguments Lucy knew there was force and good sense, but she knew, too, that but for the secret knowledge that her whole household life was crumbling about her, they would not for one moment have sufficed to withhold her from clinging to her husband’s presence till the latest possible moment.
“Now, Pollie,” she said to her servant, “I am able to tell you why I wish silence about your departure. It is finally arranged that my husband is going for a long sea-voyage. He will be away for about a year. When we first began to think of this it was a great consideration that I and the boy should have you—our household friend of seven years’ standing—to be with us. That thought was a great comfort. Now as we find this cannot be, I think we may save Mr. Challoner the distress of knowing about it before he goes. It might make him wish to postpone his going. And he ought to be off before the winter.”