‘Were my whole life to come one heap of troubles,
The pleasure of this moment would suffice,
And sweeten all my griefs with its remembrance.’
For the twentieth time within the last hour Susan has rushed
tumultuously to the window, under the mistaken impression that she has
heard the sound of wheels, and for the twentieth time has walked back
dejectedly to her seat to the slow accompaniment of her aunt’s voice:
‘Impatience, Susan, never took a second off any hour.’ It sounds like a
heading from a copy-book.
But Susan, after each disappointment, feels her spirits rise again, and,
with glad delight in her heart, trifles with the work she is pretending
to do. Betty and the boys are on the top of the garden wall, and have
promised to send her instant tidings of the approach of the carriage.
Susan felt she could not watch from there the home-coming of her Bonnie.
The workings of the human mind are strange, and Susan, who had climbed
many a wall in her time, and still can climb them with the best, shrank
with a sort of nervous terror from being up there—on the top of that
wall—when he came! She would have to climb down, you see, to meet her
little sweetheart, whereas here it will be so easy to run out and catch
him to her heart, and ask him if he has forgotten his Susan during all
these long, long days.
But truly this sitting indoors is very trying. It would be much better
to go to the gate and wait there. Even though those others on the garden
wall will have the first glimpse of him, still—at the gate she would
have the first kiss. Her father had gone to the station to meet him, but
had forbidden the others to go with him. Susan had been somehow glad of
this command. But to go to the gate! She had thought of this often, but
had somehow recoiled from it through a sense of nervousness; but now it
grows too much for her, and flinging down her work, she runs out of the
room and up to the gate, and there stands trembling, listening, waiting.
Waiting for what? She hardly knows. Crosby’s letters of late have been
very vague. They have scarcely conveyed anything. But that Bonnie is
alive is certain, and that is all that Susan dwells on now. God grant he
be not worse than when he left her—that he is better there seems no real
reason for believing. But still he is coming back to her—her little boy!
And in this fair spring weather too, so closely verging on the warmer
summer. That will be good for him. If Mr. Crosby had not taken him away
when he did, surely those late winter frosts and colds would have
chilled to death the little life left in his precious body.... A perfect
passion of gratitude towards Crosby shakes her soul, and brings the
tears to her eyes. She will never forget that, never. And though, of
course, he has failed in a sense, and her little Bonnie will come back
to her as he went—on crutches, that had always hurt so cruelly poor
Susan’s heart—still, he has done all he could, and he is to be
reverenced and loved for ever because of it. Who else, indeed, would
have thought of the delicate child, or——
Oh! what is that?
She strains forward. Now—now really the sound of wheels is here. It is
echoing through the village street, and now.... Now a shout has gone up
from the denizens on the top of the garden wall, and now a carriage has
turned the corner.
It has stopped. Mr. Crosby springs out of it; he looks at Susan, but
Susan, after one swift glance, does not look at him; her eyes have gone
farther, to a small, slim, beautiful boy who gets out of the carriage by
himself, and slowly, but without a crutch, goes to Susan, and
precipitates himself upon her with a little loving cry.
‘Susan! Susan!’ says he.
‘Oh, Bonnie! Oh, Bonnie!’ Her arms are round him. They seem to hold him
as though she could never let him go again. ‘Oh, Bonnie! you can walk by
yourself!’
Suddenly she bursts into a storm of tears, and the child clinging to her
cries too. ‘You can walk—you can walk alone!’ She repeats this between
her sobs, her face buried in the boy’s pretty locks. It seems, indeed,
as if she has nothing else to say—as if everything else is forgotten by
her. The injury she had done him has been wiped out. He can walk without
the aid of those terrible sticks.
The child, thin still, and now very pale through his emotion, yet
wonderfully healthy in comparison with what he had been, pats her with
his little hands; and presently he laughs—a laugh so free from pain, and
so unlike the old laugh that was more sad than many others’ tears, that
Susan looks up.
‘It is true, then,’ says she; ‘but walk for me again, Bonnie! Walk!’
Again Bonnie’s laugh rings clear—how sweet the music of it is!—and
stepping back from her, he goes to his father, who had followed him out
of the carriage, and from him to Crosby, and from him back again to
Susan, slowly, carefully, yet with a certain vigour that speaks of
perfect health in the near future.
Susan, who has looked as if on the point of fainting during this little
trial, catches him in her slender arms. She is trembling visibly.
Crosby goes to her quickly.
‘I should have given you a hint,’ says he remorsefully. ‘I thought of
only giving you a glad surprise; but it has been too much for you. I
should have said a word or two.’
‘There is nothing, nothing you have left undone,’ says Susan, looking at
him over Bonnie’s head, and speaking with a gratitude that is almost
fierce. ‘Nothing!’
The others have all got down off their wall by this time, and are
kissing and hugging Bonnie. After all, if they had had the first view of
the carriage, still Susan has certainly had the best of the whole
affair. Mr. Barry, with his handsome, gaunt face, radiant now, is
endeavouring to hold them back.
‘You will come in?’ says Susan to Crosby. ‘Auntie is waiting for you, to
thank you—as if’—her eyes slowly filling again—‘anyone could thank you.’
‘Oh, you can!’ says Crosby, laughing. ‘I was never so thanked in all my
life. Why, your eyes, Susan! They hold great worlds of gratitude. You’ll
have to stop being thankful to me, or I shall run away once more.
And’—he looks at her with a half-laugh on his lips, but question in his
eyes—‘you would not like to drive me into exile so soon again, would
you?’
‘No, no!’ says Susan. ‘You have been a very long time away as it is.’
‘You have missed me, I hope—by that.’
‘We have all missed you,’ says Susan softly.
‘That’s a very general remark. Have _you_ missed me?’
‘Every hour of the day,’ says Susan fervently—too fervently, too openly.
Crosby laughs again, but there is a tincture of disappointment in his
mirth this time.
‘Faithful little friend!’ returns he gaily. ‘No, Susan, I don’t think
I’ll go in now; but tell Miss Barry from me that I shall come down
to-morrow to see her and my little charge. By-the-by, I have kept my
promise to you about loving him. It was easy work; I don’t wonder now at
your love for him. I assure you I feel downright lonely at the thought
of leaving him behind me.’
He presses her hand lightly, and goes towards Bonnie.
‘Well, good-bye, old man,’ says he, catching the child and drawing him
towards him.
‘Oh no. Oh, you won’t go!’ says Bonnie anxiously.
‘For the present I must. And mind you go to bed early and sleep well, or
there will be a regular row on when next we meet.’
‘You will come this evening?’ says the child, hardly listening to him.
‘No;’ he shakes his head.
‘To-morrow, then?’ entreats the child, clinging to him.
‘To-morrow, yes.’ He whispers something in his ear, and the boy,
flinging his arm round his neck, kisses him warmly. Crosby smiles at
Susan. ‘See what chums we are,’ says he.