‘O, coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!’
‘For you, miss,’ says she, handing the basket to Susan.
Susan turns crimson. That basket! She knows it well.
‘For me?’ stammers she.
‘Yes, miss.’
‘Who’—nervously—‘who brought it?’
‘A boy, miss.’ For an instant Susan’s heart feels relief, but for an
instant only.
‘Whose boy?’ falters she.
‘I don’t know, miss. He came an’ wint in a flash like. I hope, miss, as
there isn’t anythin’ desthructive in it,’ says Jane, whose misfortunes
of the morning have raised in her a pessimistic spirit. ‘They do say
thim moonlighters are goin’ about agin.’
‘Do you mean to say the—the messenger said nothing?’
‘No, miss, except that it was for you. That was all, miss; and I’m not
deaf, though I wish I was before I heard all that was said to me this
mornin’ about an ould cup that——’ Here she lifts her apron and sniffs
vigorously behind it.
‘Oh, it can’t be for me,’ says Susan, with decision; ‘take it away,
Jane. There has been some mistake, of course. Take it away at once. Do
you hear? The—the boy will probably call for it again in a little time.’
‘I don’t think he will, miss; he looked like a runaway,’ says Jane.
‘Good heavens! how interesting,’ says Mr. Fitzgerald, breaking at last
into the charmed silence that has held them all since the advent of Jane
and the mysterious basket. ‘Who can this unknown admirer be? No doubt it
contains roses’—staring at the basket—‘or heliotropes—heliotrope in the
language of flowers means devotion! Susan, are you above a peep?’
‘Yes, I am,’ says Susan hastily.
‘I am not,’ says Betty, springing forward and pulling open the cover.
‘Oh, I say, cherries! and such beauties, too! Susan, you are in luck!’
‘And so are we,’ says Fitzgerald, putting a hand lightly over her
shoulder and drawing up a bunch of the pretty fruit between his fingers.
‘Oh, I think we ought not to eat them—I do indeed,’ says Susan, in a
small agony. There can be no doubt now about the fact that the thief,
repentant and struck to the very soul by her eloquent pleadings, had
sought to redeem himself in her eyes by sending the stolen cherries to
her. Whether with a view of giving her the pleasure of eating them, or
with the higher desire of proving to her that he hadn’t devoured them,
must, she feels and hopes (because to meet him again would be very
unpleasant to her), for ever remain unknown.
‘Poor fellow!’ thinks she, regarding the cherries with mixed emotions
that are not altogether devoid of admiration for her own hitherto
unimagined powers of persuasion; ‘he was certainly and sincerely
penitent. One could see that.’ She feels quite an uplifting of her soul.
Perhaps, who knows? she has been born as a worthy successor to Mrs. Fry,
or some of those good people! But then, after all, it is, undoubtedly,
to Mr. Crosby he should have made restitution, not to her. It is,
however, difficult to restore Irish cherries—a rather perishable
commodity—to an owner who happens to be at the moment in the middle of
Africa, or America, or China, for all she knows.
‘Not eat them!’ says Betty indignantly. ‘Why, what else are you going to
do with them—make them into jam?’
‘They are not mine—I’m sure they are not mine,’ says Susan. ‘Who, for
instance, could have sent them?’
Here Jacky makes a movement.
‘Jacky, you know nothing!’ cries Susan, turning indignant, warning eyes
upon him; whereupon Jacky, remembering his promise, subsides once again
into dismal silence.
‘Jacky, I smell a conspiracy,’ says Dominick, who has caught the look
between them; ‘and you are the head-centre. Speak, boy, whilst yet there
is time!’
‘I’ve nothing to say,’ says Jacky sulkily; he is naturally of a somewhat
morose disposition, and now feels positively ill at not being able to
divulge the delightful story of which these glowing cherries are the
result.
‘Susan, I do believe you have at last got an admirer,’ says Carew, in
the complimentary tone of the orthodox brother, who never can understand
why on earth any fellow can admire his sister. ‘Come! out with it; he
seems a sensible fellow, any way. Flowers are awful rot, but there’s
something in cherries.’
‘Betty, when I fall in love with you I’ll present you with a course of
goodies,’ says Dominick, regarding that damsel with an encouraging eye.
‘I have no admirers, as you all know,’ says Susan, her pale and lovely
face a little heightened in colour. She is thinking with horror of what
would have happened if that poor awful thief had brought them in person.
But, of course, he was afraid.
‘Perhaps Lady Millbank sent them,’ suggests Betty, after a violent
discussion with Fitzgerald on the head of his last remark. ‘I saw her in
town yesterday.’
‘So did I,’ says Carew. ‘Like a sack—not tied in the middle.’
Susan feels almost inclined in the emergencies of the moment to say
‘Perhaps so,’ and let it stand at that, but conscience forbids her.
‘She would have sent a footman and her card,’ says she dejectedly.
‘No’—decidedly, and preparing to close up the basket—‘they are not meant
for me, and even if they were, I could not accept them, unless I knew
where they came from.’
‘Do you mean that you are not going to give us some?’ says Betty,
rising, not only figuratively, but actually, to the occasion, and
standing over Susan. ‘I never heard anything so mean in all my life.’
‘Susan,’ says Fitzgerald mildly but firmly, ‘if you think to escape
alive from this spot with these cherries, let me at once warn you of a
sense of impending danger.’
‘Oh, I say, Susan, don’t be a fool!’ says Carew, turning his lazy length
upon the grass, a manœuvre that brings him much closer to Susan and the
cherries.
‘It’s a beastly shame!’ says Jacky, in a growl. And at this little Tom,
as if moved to the very soul, or stomach, sets up a piteous howl.
Susan, with all the ‘young martyr’ air about her, looks sternly round.
No; she will not give in, and it’s perfectly disgusting of them to think
so much of eating things. Her glance finishes at Jacky, who is scowling
and threatening her with the fellest of all fell eyes, and then descends
at last on Bonnie—Bonnie, who is lying in her arms, his pretty, thin,
patient little face against her shoulder. Poor little Bonnie! darling
little Bonnie! who has said nothing—not a word—but whose gentle eyes are
now resting on the fruit; Bonnie, whose appetite is always miserable—so
difficult to please. Susan, seeing that silent, wistful glance, feels
her heart sink within her.
Must she—must she deny him, her poor little delicate boy, her best
beloved of all the many that she loves? Oh, she must! she will be firm.
These cherries really are not hers. Even for Bonnie she——
The child stirs in her arms and sighs, the faintest, gentlest little
sigh—only one who loved him could have heard it; but with that little
sigh went out all Susan’s stern resolutions. Almost unconsciously her
hand goes towards the basket that holds the cherries. Slowly, slowly at
first, as if held back; but as it nears the glowing fruit it makes a
rush, as it were, dives into it, and in a second more Bonnie’s thin
little paws are filled with a huge and crimson bunch of the sweet
cherries.
Alas for Susan’s principles! They have all vanished away like snow in
the sun, beneath two little pain-filled eyes.
Alas for Susan’s principles again! As Bonnie’s white little face lights
up as he catches the pretty fruit, and bites one of them in two with his
sharp childish teeth, and as after that he lifts the other half of it to
Susan’s mouth, and presses it against her closed but smiling lips, she
does not refuse him. She opens her lips, and, against all her beliefs,
lets the stolen thing glide between them. The happy laughter of the
child as she takes the fruit is nectar to her, and in a little joyous
way she hugs him to her, catching him against her breast; and though she
does not know it, her one thought is this: ‘Let all things go so long as
this one is happy.’
And certainly Bonnie for the moment is happy with his cherries. But the
cherry he gave her is the first and only one out of her basket that
passes between her lips. And that is self-denial, I can tell you from
experience, for a girl of eighteen.
After this there is a general raid upon the basket, Betty and Fitzgerald
being quite conspicuous in their efforts to secure the largest cherries,
whilst Jacky runs them very hard. And Susan, afraid lest the supply
should fail before Bonnie gets a handsome share, pulls him to her and
fills his little hands. But her own hands? Never! Stern is her youthful
virtue. Those stolen cherries! No, no, she could not touch them, and,
besides, to watch Bonnie’s delight in them is enough for her.
Bonnie! It seems such a sad critique upon the little fragile child
racked with rheumatism and so sadly disabled by it.
In happier days, when he was, in truth, the bonniest little being of
them all, his poor mother—now mercifully in heaven—had given him the
dear pet name. And of course it had clung to him through all the ills
that followed.
The beginning was so simple, so easy to be described. A wet day when the
child had escaped from home and had been forgotten until the early
dinner reminded them of him. There were so many to remember, and they
all ran so loosely here and there, that up to that hour no one had
missed him. His mother was dead. The keynote of course lay there. She
was dead and lying in her grave for a year or more, and the young things
who tried to take her place, when they had asked a question or two,
never thought of Bonnie again. Carew, the eldest boy, then only twelve,
did not appear at dinner either, and it was naturally and carelessly
supposed that Bonnie was with him.
Alas for little Bonnie! Late that night he was discovered and brought
home, saturated to the skin, and almost lifeless. Asleep he had been
found beneath the shade of a big beech-tree; and sleep eternal he would
have known indeed had he not been discovered before morning by the
frightened people from the Vicarage, who, when night set in, had gone
hunting for him far and near. The Rector himself, roused from his notes
and papers by Susan’s terrors, had joined in the search; but it was
Susan who found him, tired, exhausted (after a ramble in which he had
lost himself, poor little soul!), and wet through from the rain that had
fallen incessantly since three o’clock in the afternoon.
It was Susan who carried him home, staggering sometimes beneath the
weight, but strong in the very misery of her fear. When at last home was
reached, it was Susan who undressed him, and lay awake the long night
through with him, holding him in her warm arms to heat his shivering
little body. And, indeed, when the morning came he seemed nothing the
worse for his exposure.
But towards the evening he began to shiver again, and next day he was
lying prone, racked with all the pangs of rheumatic fever. They twisted
and tore his little frame, and though at the last the doctor pulled him
through, and he rose again from his bed, it was but as a shadow of his
former merry self—a stricken child, a cripple for life.
Poor Susan—then thirteen—took it sorely to heart. Her mother in
heaven—had she looked down that night when Bonnie lay under the dripping
tree, and seen her pretty lamb alone, deserted?—the mother who had left
him to Susan to look after and care for. She had seemed to think more of
Bonnie in her dying moments than of the baby who had brought death to
her with his own life. Susan had been left in charge, as it were—sweet
Susan, who was barely twelve, and who, with her soft, shy ways and
lovely face, should have been left in charge herself to someone capable
of guiding her tender footsteps across earth’s thorny paths.
Her remorse dwelt with her always, and became a burden to her, and made
havoc of her colour for many a day. Of course she grew out of all
that—youth, thank God, is always growing—and at last, after many days,
joy came to her again, and all the glorious colour of life, and all the
sweetness of it. But she never lost a little pulsing grief that came to
her every now and then, telling her how she ought to have seen that
Bonnie had not wandered so far afield.
Oh, if only he could be made strong and well again. This was the heart
of the sad song that she often sang for herself alone, when time was
given her in her busy life.
She had dreamed dreams of how it would be with the little lad if he
could have been sent abroad. She had heard of certain baths, and of
wonderful cures worked by them. If he could go abroad to one of them he
might recover. But such baths were as far out of her reach as heaven
itself. It seemed hard to Susan, to whom life was still a riddle. And
she reproached herself always, and always mourned that there would never
come a time when Bonnie would be strong again, as he was when his mother
left him, and when she might meet that dear mother in heaven without
fear of reproaches.
All this lay in the background of Susan’s life, and now, as years grew,
seldom came to the front. But the child was ever her first thought and
her dearest delight, and the fact that he was not as his brothers were
was the one little blot on the happiness of her young life.