THE BOY’S APPEAL.
“Mother, now you must come to a decision. You cannot keep me longer in
suspense. Mr. Bass writes to me that there is only one vacant place in
the expedition, and that he cannot leave it longer unfilled up. It must
be Yes or No.”
“I have said No, Eddy, a hundred times.”
“But without due consideration,” he cried eagerly. “Think mother! How
often have you said that it was easier for every one when a fellow had a
bent one way or another, when he knew what he wanted to be. I never did
till now; one thing was the same to me as another; I was ready to do
whatever you said, and then you regretted that I had no bent! But now
that I have a wish, a strong desire, you deny me, you will not give me a
plain answer. The responsibility will be on you,” cried Edward, with
excitement, “if you baulk me. I feel I can do this, and I don’t know
what else I can do, and I don’t care for anything else in life.”
He was hot and flushed with eagerness. She was pale, and her face drawn
with anxiety and distress. The boy assailed with all the eagerness of
his young strength and self-will, the mother, torn by conflicting
emotions, resisted. All was unity in his mind, all contention and
complication in hers. She would have done anything in the world to
please him. She would have made any sacrifice to secure him his
wish--except the sacrifice he demanded, the sacrifice of his own
prospects, and comfort, and use in life. Even, feeling this deeply, and
feeling that it was her duty to resist him, the effort of doing so wrung
her heart.
“I know I have the responsibility,” she said gravely. “You are too young
to judge for yourself, and if you were older you are excited, Eddy, and
your mind is warped. I cannot consent to it. If I must speak decisively
let me do it at once. I cannot give you up to this vagabondism, this
mere wild course of adventure. All that man says is but words--fine
words, brave words, but nothing, nothing more, Eddy. I know what I am
speaking of. I cannot consent.”
“Then, mother--” he sprang up furiously to his feet, his whole aspect
changed. He looked as if about to pour upon her some violent outburst of
rage or reproach. Then he stopped suddenly. “If it is to be so,” he said
with a sombre countenance, “if you refuse me this only thing I have ever
cared for, then all is over with me. I don’t care what becomes of me. Do
what you like, it doesn’t matter any more.”
“This is folly--it is madness, Edward!”
“You may call it what you please,” said the lad, with a sullen shrug of
the shoulders. “One word or another, what does it matter? It is all one.
Mamma, I know you mean well, you think it is for the best; but you have
crushed all the life out of me, and I don’t care now what I do.”
“You will feel differently, Eddy, when you have considered--when you
have thought of it more.”
“Considered! Thought! As if I had done anything else for weeks,” he
said, with something like scorn; and there ensued a heavy pause, a pause
which neither broke--until at last after awhile he rose dully, and went
away, thrusting his hands down to the depths of his pockets. Poor Mrs.
Tremenheere was left victorious, but miserable. She had broken her
boy’s heart--for his good. She knew it was for his good, but still, as
he said, she had crushed him, she who would rather have been crushed
herself a hundred times. She had all the feebleness of a mother, though
she thought herself a strong-minded woman; the moment she had refused
him absolutely she began to think, would it have been possible to let
him go? Perhaps--if he had been allowed to try it, to go a certain
distance, to make the discovery for himself what it really
was--_perhaps_ that might have cured him; whereas, now it would be his
dream and ideal all his life. I can scarcely tell how she managed to
live through the afternoon without conceding to Eddy’s downcast looks
what her better judgment had refused to his entreaties, but she did hold
out for the next day, and the next again. She saw him wandering about
listlessly, not caring to go out, not caring for his cricket, not even
waking up when the _Field_ came with all its news. When a boy like
Edward Tremenheere can resist the _Field_, he must be bad indeed. Poor
Eddy looked entirely broken down. He thrust his shoulders up to his ears
and his hands down into his pockets. He left off whistling, he left off
smiling, and if indeed his mother had broken his heart, as he said, he
paid her back in her own coin, and broke hers. Never had there been a
more melancholy house than the villa for these two days. At last Mrs.
Tremenheere could bear it no longer.
“Edward,” she said, the third morning, throwing aside the diminutive,
half consciously in the solemnity of the circumstances, “this is more
than I can bear. You look as if you had lost all your friends, all you
care for----”
“So I have,” he said sullenly; and then with a look that wrung her heart
he added, “Have patience a little, mother. I have lost a great deal more
than you think--the first thing I ever really cared for. I daresay I
shall be better after a while, but I can’t look cheerful all at once.
Leave me alone till I come to myself--if I ever do.”
“You break my heart,” she said, “Oh, Eddy, if I could give in to you I
would--but how can I, feeling as I do? And you would be the first to
blame me when you are older, and see things in their true light.”
“I shall never do that,” said Edward doggedly. “The true light is what I
have been seeing so long. Now I have fallen back into no light at all,
and that is what I must put up with for the rest of my life.”
Then there was another interval of gloom and silence--another day with
still the same heavy languor upon him. Mrs. Tremenheere was altogether
overwhelmed. In the afternoon she went up-stairs, and put on her bonnet,
tying the strings resolutely before the glass, and looking almost
fiercely at her own pale face.
“I am going to town,” she said, meeting Edward on her way to the door.
“I cannot bear the responsibility you have thrown on me. I am going to
consult your father. If he thinks anything can be done to satisfy you I
will put aside my own feelings. I will not put myself in your way.”
A sudden light of joy flushed over Edward’s face.
“How good you are, mother, how good you are to me!” he cried; but then
he paused and shook his head. There was not much faith to be put in his
father. Still, a glimmering of hope sprang up in him the moment he found
that the question was not entirely concluded. He walked to the railway
station with her, his face already lightened, his head more erect, his
shoulders in their usual place. He was more tender to her than ever he
had been, compunctious, sorry for having troubled her, now that he saw a
revival of possibility that he might yet have his own way.
It was a desperate resolution which Mrs. Tremenheere had taken; all her
pride, both as wife and woman, would have to be sacrificed. She would be
obliged as good as to confess, she who in her heart thought her
experiment so much more successful than her husband’s, that she had
failed, that the mother was not enough, that she required his aid to
influence and guide her boy. Only a few weeks before her husband had
rejected her proffered aid with scorn; and now she had to go humbly to
seek his, to lay her problem before him. She walked to the little
station with a sense of humiliation and downfall in her mind which her
very anxiety could scarcely keep in balance. Never, after thus giving
in, could she hold up her head as of old before either father or son. If
she had done wrong she felt that she was punished. She could scarcely
respond to Edward’s rising cheerfulness as she went along that dreary
bit of way. What an end it was to all her pride, to all her theories! A
train had just arrived from town as she approached the platform of the
country station to wait for her train going up to town. The people
streaming out kept her back till she began to fear she would be too
late. Going on in advance, anxiously, leaving Edward behind her, she
almost ran against a gentleman who was coming with equal haste and
eagerness in the other direction, but whom in her pre-occupation she did
not notice except to get out of his way. Then she stopped short
suddenly, stopped by the cry he gave at seeing her--“Ada!” She raised
her head quickly, thunderstruck. It was Mr. Tremenheere.
“You are coming to me?” he said, holding out his hand, and stranger
still, drawing hers within his arm, and leading her with him as if they
had been the most confidential of friends. His manner was anxious and
excited. “You were coming to me, Ada. I can see it in your face.--She is
here!”
“She?” said Mrs. Tremenheere, excited too. “I don’t understand you.
Yes, I was coming to you, Charles.”
“God bless you, my dear!” he cried earnestly, “if she is safe with you
all is well.”
“Of whom are you speaking?” she said. “There is nobody with me but
Eddy;” then with a cry, “Vera! Something has happened to my child!”
Mr. Tremenheere was quite tremulous and shaken, his eyes bloodshot, his
countenance haggard, like an old man.
“Hush!” he said, “don’t let us publish it to everybody. She is not here,
then? God help us! I thought she must certainly have gone to you.”
She grasped his arm with both hands:
“Charles,” she said, “tell me what has happened? Tell me everything. It
is right I should know.”
“Yes, yes! it is right you should know. I came to you at once; it was
the first thought in my mind. We are both to blame, both to blame, if
anything beyond remedy has happened to her. Ada, she went away two days
ago, where we cannot tell. I have come down from Scotland, travelling
all night in answer to that woman’s telegram. Then I came on to you. I
thought, God help me! she was sure to be here; and when I saw you----
But pride must be at an end and everything else. I have failed with
Vera. I have driven her to despair; and where are we to find her, and
how?”
“I was coming to you with the same confession in my mouth,” said Mrs.
Tremenheere, with tears in her eyes. “I have failed as well. I was
coming to ask your help.”
“Has he gone away, too?”
“No; but something else,” she said. “Oh! forgive me, Charles, that is
not so urgent. Tell me about Vera, and we must plan what is best to be
done without delay.”
She forgot Edward and everything else. She turned down a quiet byway,
holding her husband’s arm, clinging to it. He told her his story, and
she listened, their two heads close together, their minds in absolute
union, in one interest, in one feeling. He told her how it had been
found out that Fane had followed Vera to Worthing, and how it was proved
at last that Mary, her maid, the daughter of her old nurse, was in
Fane’s pay, and working for him with all her might. He confessed that
Miss Campbell had been hard upon the girl, keeping her in a kind of
imprisonment.
“Carrying out my orders,” said the penitent father, “to the letter,
without thinking of the spirit; for, of course, that was never what I
intended. What I intended was by means of society and occupation to wean
her from any foolish fancy that might have crept into her mind; and,
indeed, I did not even know that she cared for the young fellow. I only
knew that he supposed himself to be fond of her.”
“She is such a child. It was not to be expected that you could think of
any strong sentiment on her part,” said Mrs. Tremenheere, soothingly,
“but tell me more--Was he with her? Was any one with her? and how, if
she was so watched, did she get away?”
“She went away in the morning, before any one was up, by the early train
to town. Mary was with her; no one else, so far as we can find out. It
appears,” said Mr. Tremenheere, with a look of shame, “that Miss
Campbell, hearing of some early walks she had taken, had threatened to
take her into her own room henceforward, to sleep there.”
“Vera would not put up with that. You never knew how impetuous she was;
but if Mary was with her, and Mary only---- Charles, had you reason to
think badly of this Mr. Fane?”
“Badly? No,” he said, with some impatience. “No. He is a mere nobody,
that is all. Younger brother of a commonplace squire in one of the
Midland counties--_quite_ distantly related to Lord Fanebury, with next
to nothing, and no prospects that I know of; a sort of half-artist, as
has been the fashion lately with idle young men--a man who could give
her nothing, neither money nor position, nor----”
“But that meant no harm--could not mean any harm? Oh! Charles, they are
both so young! and if you say she was harshly treated, my poor darling!
He had a good face----”
“Ada, you are always ridiculous,” he cried, giving her arm in sheer
impatience a hasty pressure with his. “What has the goodness of his face
to do with it? He was well-looking enough--the question is, What is to
be done? How are we to find her? I have set a detective on his track, of
course. Why do you cry out? Such things are done every day, and the
world need not be any the wiser. But tell me, if you have any
suggestion to make.”
“I am thinking,” she said. “But, in the first place you must come home
and rest, and take some food; you are worn out. Eddy and I, who are
fresh and untired, must work now.”
“Ah!” he said, drawing a long breath. “Yes, I am very tired; but I did
not expect you would think of me when Vera was in danger.”
“Oh! hush! hush!” she said, “are we not all one family, though we have
been fools and divided ourselves? We shall find Vera. She is a good
child, though she is hasty and young. She will not do anything there is
shame in. God bless her!” cried the mother, with tears in her eyes,
“wherever she is! She may be foolish and unhappy, but she will not go
wrong. Charles, come home and take some rest, or you will be ill. Leave
it for the moment to Eddy and me.”
It would be useless to say what Mr. Tremenheere’s feelings were when he
found himself in his wife’s house, which she called “home”--the villa he
had heard so often spoken of, but had never seen. His anxiety and
fatigue blunted the sharpness of his personal feelings. He took the food
that was served to him without even feeling it strange that she should
fill his glass with wine, and sit by him while he ate; and went to lie
down after his long vigil while she went to London with Edward, now
fully roused up, and for the moment delivered from all thought of
Africa. Mr. Tremenheere was no longer a young man, and he was very
tired; and somehow putting the whole troublesome business into other
hands seemed to relieve him, and gave him a degree of immediate ease
which a few hours ago would scarcely have seemed possible. No doubt her
mother would find her. A woman would know what another woman was likely
to do in such an emergency; and she was fresh, as she said, and untired,
whereas his head was aching with weariness. He had not slept for two
nights, and scarcely had taken any food. After his wife and his son had
left him, he wandered over the house in a curious languor of fatigue
which blunted even his anxieties. The pretty house, all still and
vacant, the broad rich landscape beneath, the sunny air and warmth and
sweetness worked upon him like a spell. How strange it was that he
should be here reposing himself, putting his burden upon other
shoulders! Yes, “we are all one family, though we have been fools and
divided ourselves.” How true that was! Mr. Tremenheere thought he had
said it himself, and in the strength of that virtuous and reasonable
sentiment went and lay down and slept. This new comer, who went to bed
in broad daylight, and who was thus left alone in possession of the
house, was a great wonder and excitement to the servants at the villa.
He was “Missis’s husband,” but he was not “Master.” “Something was up,”
everybody felt, from Jane, who was Mrs. Tremenheere’s feminine butler,
to Sam, the boy in the garden. Had he come and taken possession, and
ousted her altogether? The popular mind has great ideas as to what a
husband can do. They thought Mrs. Tremenheere’s independence must have
come to an end, and that the stranger had turned her out.
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