Another long period of home quietness, but great anxiety followed this.
Bertie, of course, would not return while the crisis of affairs in India
had not yet been determined; and we were so much the more anxious about
him, since he had been restored to us, as it seemed, out of the very
grave. Later he was seriously wounded, threatened with fever, and really
in great danger, but got through that as he had through all the other
perils of that murderous Indian war. He distinguished himself, too, to
our great pride and delight, especially to the boundless exultation of
Derwie, and gained both credit and promotion almost beyond the hopes of
so young a man. But, in the meantime, we were both anxious and
concerned, for we could not induce him to think that he had encountered
his full share of the fighting, and might now, surely, with perfect
honor and satisfaction bring his laurels home.
“If the women and the babies are all safe on board the ships,” said
Derwie, who was almost as reluctant to consent to Bertie’s return
before the fighting was over as Bertie himself.
During all this time I scarcely saw Alice; she avoided coming in my way;
when we met, avoided speaking to me--avoided looking in my face when
that was practicable--could neither forgive herself for having betrayed
her feelings, nor me for having witnessed that betrayal. Altogether her
feelings towards me and in my presence were evidently so uncomfortable,
that out of mere charity and consideration I no longer visited Mrs.
Harley’s as I had done, nor invited them to Hilfont. They still came
sometimes, but not as they had done before. I began to fear that I had
lost Alice, which, to be sure, was unkind of her, considering what very
old friends we were; but she could not forget nor forgive either herself
or me for those tears out of which she had been cheated over that
supposititious grave where Bertie Nugent was not.
So that there occurred an interregnum of information, at least, if not
of interest, in respect to the Harleys. Maurice was in London,
struggling forward to find what place he could in that perennial
battle--struggling not very successfully--for, to the amazement of all,
and, above all, to his own, he was not so greatly in advance of other
people, when he had done something definite to be judged by, as the
Fellow of Exeter had supposed himself. Providence, in quaint, poetic
justice, had deprived Maurice, for example, of that faculty of writing
which he had, maybe, esteemed too highly. His admirers had prophesied
great triumphs for him in the field of literature before he had tried
his pen there; but it turned out that Maurice could not write, and the
discovery was rather humiliating to the young man. I have no doubt he
made an infinitude of other discoveries equally unpleasant. His
Fellowship kept him from starving, but it aggravated his failures and
the pain of them, and held up more conspicuously than might have been
desired, the unexpected imperfections of “Harley of Exeter,” in whom his
contemporaries had been disposed to put a great deal of faith.
Nevertheless, Maurice held on bravely. I liked him better and better as
he found himself out. And he bore the discovery like a man.
As for Johnnie, poor boy, who had, all uneducated and without training
as he was, just that gift of putting his mind into words which his
brother lacked--he had not yet come to the bitter ending of his boyish
dream. He was busy with his second book, in high hope and spirits,
thinking himself equally secure of fame and of love. The poor lad had
forgotten entirely the difference between the present time and that
past age in which literature, fresh and novel, took its most sovereign
place. He thought how Fanny Burney was fêted and applauded for her early
novel; he thought of Scott’s unrivalled influence and honor; and he
forgot that a hundred people write books, and especially write stories,
now-a-days, for one who wrote then--and that he himself was only the
unconsidered member of a multitudinous tribe, over whose heads Fame
soared far away. It was not wonderful--he was scarcely one and twenty
yet, though he was an author, and Miss Reredos’s slave. He meant to make
the lady of his love “glorious with his pen,” as Montrose did, and
expected to find an equal monarchy in her heart. Poor cripple Johnnie! a
sadder or more grievous folly never was.
But it surprised me to find that he, poor fellow, was never the object
of his mother’s anxiety. She was sorry, with a sort of contempt for his
“infatuation,” and could not for her life imagine what men could see in
that Miss Reredos. Mrs. Harley was a very kind and tender mother, ready
at any time to deny herself for any real gratification to her boy; but
she did not make much account of his heartbreak, of which “nothing could
come.” For all practical purposes Johnnie’s love-tale was but a
fable--nothing could ever come of it. Anything so unlikely as that Miss
Reredos would marry the cripple never entered anybody’s mind but his
own. And Mrs. Harley accordingly took it calmly, save for a momentary
outburst of words now and then against the cause of Johnnie’s
delusion--that was all. Nothing save the bitter disappointment, the
violent mortification, the youthful despair, all augmented and made
doubly poignant by the ill health and infirmities of this unfortunate
boy, could result from his unlucky love-fever. So his mother was calm,
and made no account of that among her may troubled and anxious concerns.
As for Alice, she was still Mrs. Harley’s greatest grievance, though I
was not trusted with the same confidences, nor implored to use my
influence, as before. Alice was more capricious, more tantalizing, less
to be reckoned on than ever. She had, I suppose, dismissed Mr. Reredos
with less courtesy than the Rector believed due to him, for he went
about his duties with a certain grim sullenness, like an injured man,
and never permitted himself to mention her name. I was in the Rector’s
ill graces, as well as in those of Alice. He could not forgive me any
more than she could, for the confidence themselves had bestowed. It was
rather hard upon me to be thus excommunicated for no ill-doings of my
own; but I bore it as best I could, sorry for Mr. Reredos, and not
doubting that, some time or other, Alice would come to herself.
It was thus, in our immediate surroundings, that we spent the time until
Bertie’s return.