But Benson was preparing for Stephen's future in accordance with certain theories of his own. Business had taken him East during the summer, and while there he had visited several boys' schools. At last he found just such an institution as he was looking for. It was both a school and a home. Here Stephen would have the care he could not himself give him, he would have proper associates of his own age, and there would be no danger of his acquiring false and harmful ideas as he grew older as to his expectations in life. It was no part of the lawyer's plan that the boy should be brought back to Benson, at least, not until his habits and judgments were formed. As to his promise to Virginia that she should not be wholly separated from Stephen, it had already become irksome to him. Stephen was his care, his responsibility; no part of it would he share with her; the boy must learn to look to him for everything.
His farewells were a bitter, grievous thing to Stephen. They came quick upon Benson's return home, and the parting with his Aunt Virginia, and his Aunt Jane, and Harriett, and the baby, tore his small heart as no grief that had yet entered into his life had torn it. The very stability of things seemed to shake under him; he was stunned and stupefied. He was to go so far away, he could not see his Aunt Virginia, his Aunt Jane, Harriett, or the baby—and the boys! He would probably never see Spike, or Reddy, or Benjamin Wade again!
The promise of a return to Benson the next summer, which the lawyer had not been able to deny him, was no comfort to him. If the intervening months had been years they could not have been more terrible to him.
This knowledge that he was to go away, and his farewells at the cottage, all fell on one sad afternoon that he remembered long afterward with a dreadful sinking of the heart. Then Mrs. Pope appeared with Peter and the carriage, and as Virginia led him down the path to the gate, she said:
“You will not forget to love us, Stephen dear; and it will not be for so very long, for you will come back next summer;” and so she surrendered him with a final kiss to Mrs. Pope.
Stephen shrank into his seat as they were driven away; he did not trust himself to look back at the little group they were leaving, for he was aware that Mrs. Pope was not sympathetic when small boys were moved to tears, since grief was quite as objectionable to her as any crude or noisy expression of joy.
When they reached home, he walked disconsolately in the garden. He hoped Reddy, or Spike, or Benjamin Wade, would visit him in his misery and sickness of spirit, for they had not heard the tragic news, and he would have greatly valued an expression of opinion from one of them. And as he was hoping that one of them might come, he heard a shrill familiar whistle, and Reddy appeared from the back alley.
Stephen told the sorrowful news, and as he told it, strange things happened to Reddy's face. Then all at once he burst into loud wailings, and turning from Stephen, fled across the green lawn, down the shaded rows between the grape arbours, through the apple orchard, through a hole in the fence, and disappeared in the alley beyond. It was in vain that Stephen called after him, shakingly, chokingly:
“Reddy! Reddy, come back! That ain't near all! Oh, please, Reddy, come back!”
With the last flutter of Reddy's ragged jacket in the distance, Stephen's heart seemed to break. He threw himself face down on the ground, and wept bitterly.