"Blanche, my cousin! – again, again – soul with soul, amidst the dead! Look up, Blanche; it is I."
CHAPTER CIV
"Go in first, and prepare them, dear Blanche: I will wait by the door. Leave it ajar, that I may see them."
Roland is leaning against the wall – old armour suspended over the gray head of the soldier. It is but a glance that I gave to the dark cheek and high brow: no change there for the worse – no new sign of decay. Rather, if anything, Roland seems younger than when I left. Calm is the brow – no shame on it now, Roland; and the lips, once so compressed, smile with ease – no struggle now, Roland, "not to complain." A glance shows me all this.
"Papæ!" says my father, and I hear the fall of a book, "I can't read a line. He is coming to-morrow! – to-morrow! If we lived to the age of Methusalem, Kitty, we could never reconcile philosophy and man; that is, if the poor man's to be plagued with a good affectionate son!"
And my father gets up and walks to and fro. One minute more, father – one minute more – and I am on thy breast! Time, too, has dealt gently with thee, as he doth with those for whom the wild passions and keen cares of the world never sharpen his scythe. The broad front looks more broad, for the locks are more scanty and thin; but still not a furrow!
Whence comes that short sigh?
"What is really the time, Blanche? Did you look at the turret clock? Well, just go and look again."
"Kitty," quoth my father, "you have not only asked what time it is thrice within the last ten minutes, but you have got my watch, and Roland's great chronometer, and the Dutch clock out of the kitchen, all before you, and they all concur in the same tale – to-day is not to-morrow."
"They are all wrong, I know," said my mother, with mild firmness; "and they've never gone right since he left."
Now out comes a letter – for I hear the rustle – and then a step glides towards the lamp; and the dear, gentle, womanly face – fair still, fair ever for me – fair as when it bent over my pillow, in childhood's first sickness, or when we threw flowers at each other on the lawn at sunny noon! And now Blanche is whispering; and now the flutter, the start, the cry – "It is true! it is true! Your arms, mother. Close, close round my neck, as in the old time. Father! Roland, too! Oh joy! joy! joy! home again – home till death!"
CHAPTER CV
From a dream of the Bushland, howling dingoes,7 and the war-whoop of the wild men, I wake and see the sun shining in through the jasmine that Blanche herself has had trained round the window – old school-books, neatly ranged round the wall – fishing rods, cricket-bats, foils, and the old-fashioned gun, – and my mother seated by the bedside – and Juba whining and scratching to get up. Had I taken thy murmured blessing, my mother, for the whoop of the blacks, and Juba's low whine for the howl of the dingoes?
Then what days of calm exquisite delight! – the interchange of heart with heart; what walks with Roland, and tales of him once our shame, now our pride; and the art with which the old man would lead those walks round by the village, that some favourite gossips might stop and ask, "What news of his brave young honour?"
I strive to engage my uncle in my projects for the repair of the ruins – for the culture of those wide bogs and moorlands: why is it that he turns away, and looks down embarrassed? Ah, I guess! – his true heir now is restored to him. He cannot consent that I should invest this dross, for which (the Great Book once published) I have no other use, in the house and the lands that will pass to his son. Neither would he suffer me so to invest even his son's fortune, the bulk of which I still hold in trust for that son. True, in his career, my cousin may require to have his money always forthcoming. But I, who have no career, – pooh! these scruples will rob me of half the pleasure my years of toil were to purchase. I must contrive it somehow or other: what if he would let me house and moorland on a long improving lease? Then, for the rest, there is a pretty little property to be sold close by, on which I can retire when my cousin, as heir of the family, comes, perhaps with a wife, to reside at the Tower. I must consider of all this, and talk it over with Bolt when my mind is at leisure from happiness to turn to such matters; meanwhile I fall back on my favourite proverb, – "Where there's a will there's a way."
What smiles and tears, and laughter and careless prattle with my mother, and roundabout questions from her, to know if I had never lost my heart in the Bush; and evasive answers from me, to punish her for not letting out that Blanche was so charming. "I fancied Blanche had grown the image of her father, who has a fine martial head certainly, but not seen to advantage in petticoats! How could you be so silent with a theme so attractive?"
"Blanche made me promise."
Why? I wonder. Therewith I fell musing.
What quiet delicious hours are spent with my father in his study, or by the pond, where he still feeds the carps, that have grown into Ceprinidian leviathans. The duck, alas! has departed this life – the only victim that the Grim King has carried off; so I mourn, but am resigned to that lenient composition of the great tribute to Nature. I am sorry to say the Great Book has advanced but slowly – by no means yet fit for publication, for it is resolved that it shall not come out as first proposed, a part at a time, but totus, teres, atque rotundus. The matter has spread beyond its original compass; no less than five volumes – and those of the amplest – will contain the History of Human Error. However, we are far in the fourth, and one must not hurry Minerva.
My father is enchanted with Uncle Jack's "noble conduct," as he calls it; but he scolds me for taking the money, and doubts as to the propriety of returning it. In these matters my father is quite as Quixotical as Roland. I am forced to call in my mother as umpire between us, and she settles the matter at once by an appeal to feeling. "Ah, Austin! do you not humble me, if you are too proud to accept what is due to you from my brother."
"Velit, nolit, quod amica," answered my father, taking off and rubbing his spectacles – "which means, Kitty, that when a man's married he has no will of his own. To think," added Mr Caxton, musingly, "that in this world one cannot be sure of the simplest mathematical definition! You see, Pisistratus, that the angles of a triangle so decidedly scalene as your Uncle Jack's, may be equal to the angles of a right-angled triangle after all!"8
The long privation of books has quite restored all my appetite for them. How much I have to pick up! – what a compendious scheme of reading I and my father chalk out. I see enough to fill up all the leisure of life. But, somehow or other, Greek and Latin stand still: nothing charms me like Italian. Blanche and I are reading Metastasio, to the great indignation of my father, who calls it "rubbish," and wants to substitute Dante. I have no associations at present with the souls
"Che son contenti
Nel fuoco;"
I am already one of the "beate gente." Yet, in spite of Metastasio, Blanche and I are not so intimate as cousins ought to be. If we are by accident alone, I become as silent as a Turk, as formal as Sir Charles Grandison. I caught myself calling her Miss Blanche the other day.
I must not forget thee, honest Squills! – nor thy delight at my health and success; nor thy exclamation of pride, (one hand on my pulse and the other griping hard the "ball" of my arm,) "It all comes of my citrate of iron; nothing like it for children; it has an effect on the cerebral developments of hope and combativeness." Nor can I wholly omit mention of poor Mrs Primmins, who still calls me "Master Sisty," and is breaking her heart that I will not wear the new flannel waistcoats she had such pleasure in making – "Young gentlemen just growing up are so apt to go off in a galloping 'sumption!" "She knew just such another as Master Sisty,