While Roger Musgrave travelled full of hope and pleasant anticipation
towards Milnehill, Roger's mother had been mourning over her dead
husband. And now, while that happy evening party gathered in Colonel
Sutherland's drawing-room, the widow and her little boy were spending
the slow hours together in the warm parlour, where Edmund spent his
invalid childhood. His father's death had given a shock more than it
could bear to the nervous and weakly frame of the ailing child; his
father was dead, and he was the heir. An unnatural excitement stimulated
the precocious little mind, and rose to fever in the throbbing pulse and
little pinched cheeks, now flushed with a hectic brightness. The little
fellow had visions too magnificent to be safe, and projects as wild and
impossible, as they were childish and simple-hearted. After the first
pangs of his childish grief were over, Edmund, who knew nothing about
guardians nor minority, began to speculate splendidly what he should do
with his new wealth. He poured into his mother's ears a flood of
intentions, vain, lavish, childish dreams of universal help. He was to
send for Roger and give the greater half of all he had to his elder
brother; he was to get everything she could desire for Mrs. Stenhouse;
he was to send a present of the most beautiful horse in the world to
Colonel Sutherland; and henceforward they were all to live together, and
"my brother Roger" was to be supreme in the joint household. Mrs.
Stenhouse, afraid to check him, and at the same time trembling for the
effect of this excitement upon his weak frame, looked on with a troubled
heart. She knew Edmund would not get his wild will _now_, as he supposed
he should. She knew very well that nobody would permit him to do a tenth
part of what he meant to do. But when he roused himself up out of his
chair with that light of pleasure on his face, and that hectic flush
which she persuaded herself into supposing "a healthy colour," and
amused the languor of his lonely days with these imperative fancies,
what could the poor woman do who had been his bondwoman and servant so
long? And then she was full of sorrowful thoughts about "his dear
father," as Mrs. Stenhouse now called the careless partner of her life,
mourning him as many a man is mourned who does little to deserve that
remorseful tribute of late affection. Now that he was gone, she thought
it must have been her own fault that they did not get on better; and it
grieved her to find how impossible it was to check Edmund into sadness,
and to make him feel that the loss of his father was a matter far more
important than his supposed mastery of his father's wealth. Edmund had
cried all his tears out the first day, and had no more lamentations to
make.
"What do you cry for?" he exclaimed at last, impatiently; "aren't you
glad to send for Roger, and have him at home? I shouldn't wonder if
he'd join the Edgehill Cricket-club, and get to be captain of the
eleven--wouldn't it be famous. And I mean to get strong, _I_ can tell
you, mamma. I don't mean to live in this stifle and coddle, now I've
come into my fortune; for papa said it was all for me."
"Oh, Edmund, dear child, your father was so fond of you!" cried the poor
mother; "have you no thought to spare for him, now that he is gone? He
loved you more than everything in the world. I wish--I wish you would
think more of him than of what he leaves behind."
Little Edmund looked up keenly at the weak, weeping, timid woman.
"Were you fond of him yourself?" said the child, half suspiciously; "now
you love him and cry about him; but it is different with me. He was very
good to me, was papa," continued the little man, with a reluctant tear
in the corner of his eye; "but all of you say he's a deal better off
now, and that we'll see him again. If that's true, why do you cry?--and
besides, mamma, I used always to think that you liked Roger's father
best."
Mrs. Stenhouse covered her face with her hands, and only cried the more;
she was vexed, humiliated, and ashamed, as well as full of grief. It
seemed somehow sacrilege to speak of Roger's father to the son of her
second husband; and Roger's father was little to herself now but a
bright, brief dream of her girlhood, too short, too happy to influence
her life. Now the second, longer, harder, more serious portion of her
existence had concluded also; but while she sat crying these tears of
mortification and wounded feeling, some one beckoned her to the door of
the room and gave her some letters. One of these was from Roger himself,
announcing his arrival, and that he had gone to Milnehill; for Roger as
yet did not know what had happened in his mother's house. This
surprising announcement raised her out of her distress in a moment and
dried her tears. A thrill of new freedom ran warm through her heart,
stirring the blood in her dull veins. Roger, her first-born, whom she
had not seen since he was almost a baby--whom Mr. Stenhouse smilingly
disliked, and would not permit to come there--Roger, her brave soldier,
her handsome boy! Now she could have him under her own roof, without
asking anybody's permission; now she could enjoy her son's society in
fullest freedom. Poor soul! it gave her a compunction to feel how glad
she was; but she could not deny even to herself how exquisite for the
first moment was that unaccustomed delight.
"Oh, Edmund, darling, look here!" cried poor Mrs. Stenhouse, crying
again, but this time with joy; "Roger has come home--_your brother_, my
love;" and with an outcry of mingled terror, compunction, and delight,
to feel herself daring enough in this house to pronounce these words
aloud, Mrs. Stenhouse thrust the letter into Edmund's hands, and
relapsed once more into tears.
Her other letters had fallen on the floor at her feet. When Edmund had
finished Roger's, his inextinguishable childish curiosity discovered
these. His mother was still crying, and he was her lord and master, the
autocrat acknowledged and apparent of the house; he slid out of the easy
chair as a cripple slides, and snatched up the nearest. Though it was
addressed to Julius Stenhouse, Esq., the arrogant little imp did not
hesitate to tear it open; but he did it with some haste, to make sure of
the epistle before his mother uncovered her eyes. It was a communication
somewhat puzzling to brains so young. Edmund, though his pride would not
acknowledge it even to himself, did not understand half of Mr. Pouncet's
letter, but he gleaned enough out of it to know that something that
concerned Roger had been a subject of importance likewise to his father
and his father's friend; and that the writer of the present epistle,
which had, it appeared, been delayed in the transmission, was in a state
of considerable alarm and trepidation about something. What it was that
Mr. Pouncet feared Edmund could not make out, but he jumped at the
conclusion that something was wrong as rapidly as Susan had done.
Afraid!--why should a man be afraid?--Roger wasn't. Roger was the
epitome of Edmund's faith. He had been badly educated, this poor child.
He knew very little in heaven or earth save his prayers and Roger, and
trusted in nothing as he did in that unknown, never-to-be-acknowledged,
secret, invisible brother, whom his mother told him of in whispers, and
whom he thought of by day and dreamt of by night. Now glorious times
were coming. Papa and this other man, whose letter rather baffled
Edmund, had doubtless entertained some project of keeping Roger down;
but behold the tables were turned, the conspirators were cheated, and
the details of the complot had fallen into the hands of Roger's little
knight and defender. True, he did not understand them very well, but
still they were here.
"Roger shall come home directly," said the little despot, waving aloft
in his hand these two epistles. "I'll give him half of all my money,
mamma. He shan't go for a soldier any more; and I'll find out if anybody
wants to do him any harm, and punish them, I will! Look here; it's
something about Roger, but I don't quite know every word what it means.
_You_ can't tell any more than me. I say, mamma, let's have Scarsdale
here, and ask _him_."
"What is it, love?" asked Mrs. Scarsdale, wiping her eyes.
"I wish you'd mind what one says," cried the impatient little invalid.
"I told you I didn't know quite all it means, neither could you if you
was to try. Mamma, ring the bell and send for Scarsdale--he's got no
master now but you and me; send and tell him I want him, and he's to
come directly. Mamma, do you hear?"
And when Mrs. Stenhouse had glanced over the letter, which she did
understand rather better than Edmund after all, she thought the boy's
suggestion wise. She had not the smallest gleam of discrimination in
respect to character, and to be Colonel Sutherland's nephew was enough
to give her a blind confidence in Horace; and as to the possibility of
acting for herself, that did not enter into the poor woman's head. She
sent for Scarsdale accordingly, not in little Edmund's imperative mood,
but with a pleading message that Mr. Scarsdale would be so _very_ good
as to come to her as soon as it was _quite_ convenient for him, as she
was so anxious to consult him about a letter she had received. Her
heart beat higher in her breast that day with a deeper individual throb
than it had known for many a previous year; a little flutter of
tumultuous independence was in her mind; she would receive Roger into
her own house unreproved; she seemed on the very eve of finding out
something which might be of service to that cherished but unknown son;
and her whole nature was stimulated by these unaccustomed hopes.