AT HOME
"How soon a smile of God can change the world!
How we are made for happiness--how work
Grows play, adversity a winning fight!"
--_R. Browning._
It was a bright July morning. After a prosperous voyage, the _Semaphore_
was steaming in to Southampton Pier. John Grayson stood on the deck,
looking at the shores of the native land he had never hoped to see
again. Near him, though not speaking, stood Kaspar Hohanian; and a
little behind them Artin and Markeret sat together, the sister telling
her blind brother all she saw. The three had just been thanking the
captain, with full hearts, for many kindnesses shown them during the
voyage.
Presently the throbbing pulses of the ocean monster sank into stillness;
the double gangway was laid across; and then ensued a frantic rush of
eager passengers, laden with every description of the luggage called by
courtesy "light." Others stood on guard beside their boxes, or shouted
to the porters, who were rushing still more frantically the other way.
Along with the porters came a tall athletic young parson, in a soft felt
hat and clerical undress. With alert and cheerful aspect, he went about
among the groups, looking earnestly at all the men, in evident search
for some one. He bestowed a rapid glance upon Kaspar Hohanian, but
turned away disappointed. Then he almost flung himself upon John
Grayson--only to draw off again instantly, much disconcerted. "I beg
your pardon," he said.
Jack looked him in the face. It was a good face, and a strong face
too--frank, manly, trustful and trustworthy. The young man's complexion,
naturally fair, was well bronzed by air and exercise, his eyes were
English blue, his hair and beard light brown.
"I beg your pardon," he said to Jack, with the slight, respectful
inflection of tone a well-bred young man uses to an elder. "I mistook
you for a cousin, who is on board, and whom I have come to meet."
"May I ask the name?"
"Mr. John Grayson. We have not met since we were both schoolboys. So,
you see, I am a little puzzled."
"Fred--Fred Pangbourne, don't you know me?" cried Jack, springing
forward and seizing both his hands.
"I--I could not have believed it!" Fred ejaculated, horror-stricken. "My
poor Jack, what have they done with you?"
_That_ question could not be answered in a breath. "How is your father?
How is every one?" Jack queried, evading it.
"Ah! so you did not get our letters, and have heard nothing. My father
went from us years ago. The rest of us are quite well. Now you are
coming with me, right away, to Gladescourt."
"To where?"
"My Curacy. At present indeed I may call it my Rectory; since, in the
Rector's absence, I live in his house. Where is your luggage?"
"In this handbag."
Fred looked surprised, but only said, "Let us come at once then."
"Stay, Fred; I must look after my friends." He turned to them and spoke
in Armenian. "Kaspar, take care of your sister; I will look after
Artin."
Fred wondered who these people could be, but was too courteous not to
offer his services. He thought the dark-eyed girl remarkably pretty,
but felt provoked at the boy's passivity and want of interest in
everything, until Jack whispered, "He is blind."
A few words in the strange tongue were exchanged with them; then Jack
enquired, "Do you know about the trains to Manchester, Fred? Can my
friends get there to-night?"
"Oh, I dare say. I will find out. But come on shore now. I have ordered
breakfast at the Hotel; and," he added, in the warmth of his heart,
"will you ask your friends to come with us?"
"You can ask them yourself," said Jack, smiling. "They speak
English,--Kaspar very well, the others a little." Then he duly
introduced his friend Baron Kaspar Hohanian to his cousin the Rev.
Frederick Pangbourne.
A couple of hours later, the three Armenians were safely deposited in
the train for London, with full instructions how to change, when they
got there, to the Northern Line, while Jack and his cousin were rolling
swiftly in a different direction. Conversation, as usual in such cases,
was intermittent, incoherent, dealing with trifles near at hand, rather
than with the great things each had to tell the other. "Those Armenians
astonish me," Fred remarked. "Their manners are perfect. They might take
their places, with credit, in any London drawing-room. But then, I
suppose, they are of the highest rank in their own country. You called
the young man 'Baron.'"
"Oh, that is nothing! Baron only means 'Mr.' But I really think, Fred,
from what I heard on board, that the English fancy the Armenians are a
kind of savages. They are a highly refined and intellectual race, with a
civilization older than our own, and a very copious and interesting
literature."
"But what a wreck your friend looks! Has he just come out of a great
illness?"
"He has come out of what is infinitely worse--a Turkish prison. But,
Fred, there are a thousand things I want to know. My poor uncle?"
Frederick Pangbourne told him in many words what may here be compressed
into very few. When the tidings of the death of the two Graysons came to
their friends at home, Ralph Pangbourne was just dead, and his eldest
son was lying dangerously ill in typhoid fever. Young and experienced,
and beset by many cares and troubles, the new squire, on his recovery,
was quite unable to investigate the story sent to him by the Consul from
Aleppo. Indeed, no one thought of doubting it; though all sincerely
regretted these near relatives, left to lie in unknown graves in that
distant land--
"With none to tell '_them_' where we sleep."
Had one of the young Pangbournes been free to do it, he would gladly
have made a pilgrimage (attractive, besides, for the adventure's sake)
to the far East, to find the resting-place of his uncle and his cousin.
But young Ralph, the squire, was overwhelmed with business; Tom, the
second son, was in India, doing well in the Civil Service; and Fred was
at Cambridge, preparing for the ministry.
There was another question. What of "the Grayson money," as it was
called in the family? It was no secret that, before leaving England,
John Grayson had made his will, bequeathing the bulk of his fortune, in
case of his son's death without issue, to his nephew and namesake, John
Frederick Pangbourne. But though they assumed, as a certain fact, the
death of both the father and the son, the Pangbournes felt it would be a
difficult matter to prove it in a court of law. Fred, the person
principally concerned, entreated his brothers to let the matter rest, at
least until the termination of the seven years of absence and silence
which the law accepts as equivalent to a proof of death. He had,
inwardly, an intense repugnance--a repugnance he could not account for
to himself--to the thought of touching the Grayson money. In secret, and
unknown to all the rest, he cherished a fancy that his cousin might
still be found among the living. When Jack's letter arrived from Aleppo,
he exulted openly and heartily. A post-card which followed it having
informed him that Jack was to sail in the _Semaphore_, he watched daily
for news of the vessel; and it was with joy and gladness that he
hastened down to Southampton, to be the first to welcome him on English
ground. He had set his heart upon carrying him off at once to the sweet
Surrey rectory, where his favourite sister, Lucy, kept house for him,
and shared the pleasant labours of the rural parish. But he was not
prepared to find, instead of a lad five years his junior, a worn,
broken, grey-haired man.
He did not tell all, or nearly all, this to Jack, though he told a great
many other things. The only reference indeed that he made to money
matters was to say, "You must run up to town on Monday, and see Penn &
Stamper. They will tell you all about my uncle's affairs. You know,
Jack, you are a rich man. Won't they just have a balance worth looking
at to hand over to you, after all these years?"
They got out at a little road-side station, and walked over sunny fields
to a private door opening into a well-kept pleasure ground. Another
minute brought them to the Rectory porch, over which climbed a beautiful
wisteria. The whole scene looked the very picture of peace, of
"quietness and assurance for ever." Fred stopped a moment, to point out
the spire of "our Church," which was seen above the trees at the far
side of the house. As they looked at it, a fair girl came running down
to the door to welcome her brother. Blue eyes, golden hair, cheeks like
a tinted sea-shell, coral lips and the sweetest of smiles, made up for
Jack a vision of beauty bewilderingly new and strange. Yet he only felt
it touch the surface of his soul.
After dinner, which was early, the two young men walked about together;
Fred joyously and proudly showing his cousin the beauties of his home,
which, he said, might be his for long enough, as his Rector, for special
reasons, was residing abroad.
"It is a home of peace," Jack said. Old, old memories were coming to
life every moment. The sound of rooks cawing in the elms, the velvet
lawn, the flowers in the trim parterre, the very feel of the air and hue
of the sunshine, brought back those old days when his little feet had
trotted over just such velvet turf, his little hand clinging to his
mother's gown. Ah, if _she_ were here! And his father--the father who
had been also his hero, brother, comrade, friend. Then a sweet thought
brought sudden tears to his eyes. Surely the angels would see to it that
Shushan found them out! His heart, bruised and sore with longings for
what might have been, grew still. His Lily had a fairer home than this--
"Over the river, where the fields are green."
The cousins went back to the house. Lucy poured out tea for them, and
asked Jack, lightly and prettily, many questions about the strange
places he had been in, and the strange things he must have seen. He
answered evasively, with a reserve of manner which she thought very odd,
until she hit upon the explanation that this new cousin--who was so
young and looked so old--had been so long amongst wild, barbarous
people, that on his return to civilization he was actually
feeling--_shy_.
She was not sorry when Fred took him off to his "den," as he called his
very comfortable and commodious study. But she said, with a pretty
monitorial air, and a careful eye to the sermon for
to-morrow--"Remember, Fred, this is Saturday night."
Then the real talk began. Jack, in writing from Aleppo, had simply told
of his father's death, and added that he himself had endured _and seen_
much suffering, and that he was coming home to tell the rest. Now he
poured forth the whole story into willing and sympathizing ears.
Lucy went up to bed that night wondering if Fred and the new cousin
would ever stop talking, and full of anxious thoughts about the
neglected sermon. As long as she stayed awake she heard their voices in
the room underneath her own; and at last she dropped asleep, with the
sermon still upon her mind.
Waking in the early summer morning, she heard steps in the passage
outside her door, and words spoken that seemed to echo her thoughts.
"But your sermon?"
"I have got it. Good night--or rather, good morning."