IT was once more spring when Bertie returned. Spring—Easter—that resurrection time which came to our hearts with a more touching force when we received home into our peaceful house—so pale, so worn out, and yet so sunburnt and scarred with violent labors past—that Bertie, who had gone from us so strong and so bold. He had been repeatedly wounded—had suffered more than once from fever—had felt, at last, that his health was broken, and that there was little more use in him while he remained in India, and so was persuaded to come home. Derwent, kindest of friends, went to meet him at Southampton, and brought him home as tenderly as any nurse, or rather far more tenderly, with a tenderness more considerate and requiring less response than that of a woman. To see our young hero an invalid, overpowered me entirely. I quite broke down under it, comparing him with what he was, and fearing everything from the mortal paleness, thrown by his sunbrowned complexion into a ghastly yellow, which sometimes overspread his face. Derwent judged more justly—he held up his finger to me when he saw the exclamation of dismay and grief that trembled on my lips.
“He’s tired, Clare,” said my husband. “A bright fire, and an English bed and rest—that’s all Bertie wants to-night. He’ll answer all your questions to-morrow. Come, old fellow, you know your way to your old room.”
“I should think so, indeed—and thank God I am at home,” cried Bertie, with his familiar voice. With a thrill of anguish I restrained my salutations and followed quietly to see that all was comfortable for him. He protested that it was nonsense, that he could come downstairs perfectly well, that Mr. Crofton only wanted to humble his vanity; but at the same moment drew up his foot wearily upon the sofa, with a gesture that showed better than words his need of rest.
“Alas, Derwent, has it come to this?” said I, as we went downstairs.
Derwent turned round upon me, put his big hands upon my shoulders, and thrust me in before him to the handiest room. “Now, Clare,” he said, with comical solemnity, “if we are going to have any nonsense or lamentations, I’ll shut you up here till my patient’s better. The boy is as sound as I am, and would be able to ride to cover in a fortnight, if any such chances were going. Now don’t say a word—I am speaking simple truth.”
“I must trust my own eyes,” said I; “but you need not fear my indiscretion. See how I have refrained from agitating him now.”
“Agitating him! Oh!” cried Derwent, with a good-humored roar. “What stuff you speak, to be sure! He is quite able to be agitated as much as you please—there is nothing in the world but wounds and fatigue the matter with Bertie. I am afraid you are only a woman after all, Clare; but you’re not to interfere with my patient. I’ve taken him in hand, and mind you, I’m to have the credit, and bring him through.”
“But, oh, Derwent,” said I, “how pale he is!”
“If I had seen as many dreadful sights as he has, I should be pale too,” said Derwent. “Seriously, he is tired and worn out, but not ill. Don’t be sorry for him, Clare—don’t put anything in his head. Talk pleasantly. I don’t forbid the subject, for example,” said my husband, looking at me with a certain affectionate cloudy mirth, as if he had known my secret all along, “of Alice Harley, if you choose.”
I put him aside a little impatiently, and he followed me into the very late dinner, which had been deferred for the arrival of the travellers, and where Bertie’s empty chair struck me again with a little terror. But I was wise for once, and yielded to Derwent’s more cheerful opinion. On the next morning Bertie was better—he went on getting better day by day. Derwent took care of him, and attended him in a way which took me by surprise; never teasing him with questions—never gazing at him with his heart in his eyes, as we womanish creatures do, to mar the work we would give our lives to accomplish; but with his eyes always open, and his attention really missing nothing that happened, and taking account of all.
A week after his arrival, Bertie, who hitherto had been telling me, as he could, his adventures in India—dread adventures, interwoven with all the thread of that murderous history—at last broke all at once into the full tide of home talk.
“And dear old Estcourt, Cousin Clare,” said Bertie, “stands exactly as it was, I suppose; and Miss Austin as steadfast as the lime trees—and the children to keep the old park cheerful—all as it was?”
“All as it was, Bertie; but the other house ready and waiting for you.”
I looked up with a little anxiety to see the effect of what I said. Distracted with a disappointed love, Bertie had left us—ill and languid he had returned. I thought my words might recall to his mind at once his old dreams and his present weakness; and with some terror I glanced at his face. He was lying on the sofa in that bright morning room with the great bow window, from which, shining afar like a great picture, he could see all the peaceful slope of our low-country, with the river glistening in links and bends, and the cathedral towers far off, lending a graceful centre and conclusion to the scene.
Bertie did not return my glance; he lay still, with a languid ease and satisfaction in his attitude which struck me for the first time—as if he was profoundly content to be there, and felt his fatigues and pains melt away in that warmth of home. As I looked at him a warmer color rose over his brown-pale face, a pleasant glimmer woke in his eye—his whole aspect warmed and brightened—a half conscious smile came playing about his parted lips. Whatever Bertie thought upon, it was neither disappointment nor broken health.
There was a long pause—the silence was pleasant—broken only by the soft domestic sounds of a great house; brightly lay that pleasant landscape outside the window, all soft and sweet with spring; tender and pleasant was the contrast of all the scene, the care and love surrounding the soldier now, with the burning plains and cruel contests from which he had come; and thoughts, dear, warm, and tender, arose in Bertie’s heart. He paused long, perhaps, with a simple art, to conceal from me a little the link of pleasant association which had directed his thoughts that way—then, with that wavering, conscious smile, spoke—
“So Alice Harley is not married,” he said, turning on his elbow, with a pretence of carelessness, as if to get a fuller view. “How is that, Cousin Clare?”
To think that Alice Harley connected herself instinctively with the idea of Bertie’s house which was ready for him, was a pleasant thought to me; but I only answered, “There is no telling, Bertie. She might have been married two or three times had she pleased.”
“I am very glad of it,” said Bertie; “to see every pretty girl whom one used to know converted into the mother of ever so many children, makes a fellow feel old before his time. I am not so frightfully old, after all; but I fear nobody will have anything to say to a worn-out poor soldier like me.”
“Don’t be too humble, Bertie,” said I. “I don’t think, between ourselves, that Colonel Nugent is so very diffident of his own merits. On the contrary, he knows he has made a little noise in this world, is aware that people will drink his health, and fête him when he is well enough, and that all the young ladies will smile upon the hero. Don’t you think now, honestly, that this is the real state of the case?”
Bertie blushed and fell back to his old position. “Don’t be hard upon a fellow, Cousin Clare,” he said, with a slightly pleading tone—half afraid of ridicule—half conscious that little ridicule was to be expected from me.
“No indeed, quite the reverse—nobody will be hard upon you, my boy,” said I. “Huntingshire is quite ready to bestow anything you wish upon you, Bertie—anything from a seat in Parliament, up to the prettiest daughter it has, if you mean to set up your household gods in the Estcourt jointure-house.”
Bertie blushed once more, and coughed, and cleared his throat a little, as if he had some intentions of taking me into his confidence, when my boy Derwie suddenly made a violent diversion by rushing in all red and excited, and flinging himself against our soldier with all his might.
“Bertie!” shouted little Derwent, “is it true you’re going to have the Victoria Cross?”
Bertie colored violently as he recovered from that shock. I don’t believe, if he had been suddenly charged with running away, that he would have looked half as much abashed.
“Why, you know, Derwie, we’d all like it if we could get it,” he said, faltering slightly; but I knew in a moment, by the sudden movement of his head and glance of his eye, that he really did believe it possible, and that this was the darling ambition of Bertie’s heart.
“But Bevan told me!” cried Derwie—“he told me about those gates, you know, that you and the rest blew up. Mamma, listen! There were six of them, forlorn-hope men, Bevan says”——
“Ah, Derwie, hush!—four of them sleep yonder, the brave fellows!—four privates, who could not hope for distinction like me,” cried Bertie, with that same profound awe and compunction, contrasting his own deliverance with the calamity of others, which had once stricken me.
“A private can have the Victoria Cross as well as a general,” cried Derwie, clapping his hands; “and more likely, Bevan says—for a general commands and doesn’t fight.”
“That is true—God save the Queen!” cried Bertie. “If Corporal Inglis gets it, Derwie—and he ought—we’ll illuminate.”
“If you get it,” said Derwie, “you deserve it all the same. Mamma, they blew up the gates with gunpowder; they went close—so close that”——
“Boh!” cried Bertie; “mamma read all about it in the papers. It was nothing particular—it only had to be done, that’s all. Now, Derwie, don’t you know when a thing has to be done somebody must do it?”
“Yes, I know,” said Derwie, “perfectly well. When mamma says must I always go directly—don’t I, mamma?—and if I were as big as you I wouldn’t mind being killed either. When you were killed, Bertie—that time you know when everybody thought so—oh, what a crying there was!”
“Was there?” asked Bertie, with a softened tone, putting his arm round the eager child.
But a new point of interest in those human studies which were so dear to him had suddenly seized upon Derwie’s imagination. He turned abruptly to me.
“Mamma, didn’t Alice come once and cry? I saw her go away with such red eyes; and she never came again, and never looked like her own self when she did come,” said my boy, with a courageous disregard of grammar. “What is that for? Wasn’t she glad when Bertie came alive again, and it was only poor Captain Hughes?”
“Hush, Derwie, my boy—you don’t understand these things. I was deeply grieved for that poor Captain Hughes, Bertie—I almost felt as if, in our great anxiety for you, his fall was our fault.”
But Bertie was not thinking of Captain Hughes. He was looking intently at me with that wavering color in his cheeks and an eager question in his eyes. When I spoke, my words recalled him a little, and he put on a grave look, and murmured something about the “poor fellow!” or “brave fellow!” I could not tell which—then looked at me again, eager, with a question hovering on his lips. The question of all others which I was resolute not to answer. So I gathered up my work remorselessly, put it away in my work-table, jingled my keys, told him I would see if the newspaper had come yet, and left the room without looking round. He might find that out at Alice’s own hands if he wished it—he should not receive any clandestine information from me.