AND LAST.
There is a charming little villa some distance from Heritage Hall—a
pretty place, on which many a weary wanderer, tired with life’s
pilgrimage, has looked with an envious eye, and thought what a peaceful
haven it must be to anchor in at last.
It is the bright summer time when we pause to admire this rustic
retreat. The June roses are hanging about the porch; the scent of the
sweet, old-fashioned flowers fills the air, and the lattice windows are
opened wide to let in the odorous breeze.
In an invalid chair, wheeled to the door, sits an old lady, peacefully
dozing. The evening of her life is far spent, and the night is at hand,
but loving hands are ever ready to guide her tottering footsteps to the
journey’s end.
Old Mrs. Adrian—dead to the past, dead to the future—dozes her
declining days away here in this peaceful cottage, still finding a
tongue that can chide for fancied slights, still in her feeble frame
finding the strength to oppose and to contradict, but never failing,
when she hears a gentle footstep approaching, to brighten into a smile,
and to mumble out a loving word to the pale, gentle lady who bends over
her and kisses the wrinkled brow.
And often with the quiet lady there comes to her a tall, graceful,
blue-eyed girl—a girl just budding into womanhood.
These three—the old woman, the quiet, pale-faced lady, whose face bears
traces of a sorrow too deep for words, endured nobly, and the young
girl standing on the threshold of womanhood and waiting till some
footfall shall make her heart beat with a new strange feeling—are
together near the open door this warm June morning. Lying with his head
upon his paws stretched out in front of his young mistress, is an old
dog, who has his meat cut very small for him, and who now and then wags
his tail with a stateliness suitable to grey hairs, but whose old eyes
brighten still with a fond look of love when a gentle hand pats him and
the voice which is the sweetest music he ever heard calls ‘Lion.’
Together they form a picturesque group that arrests the attention of a
very dusty, very hot, and very fat gentleman, who takes his
pocket-handkerchief from his hat and mops a shiny bald head with it.
‘I beg pardon, ladies,’ says the man, ‘but maybe you can tell me where
Squire Heritage lives?’
The young lady rises and comes to the garden gate. She is about to
direct the man, when a cloud of dust comes round the corner. There is a
clatter of horse’s hoofs, and a pony-chaise rattles up to the door.
‘Here is the squire,’ says the young lady.
The fat gentleman stands aside and the squire does not see him. He is a
handsome, happy-looking fellow, this squire, and there is a lady with
him whose cheeks glow with health and whose bright eyes are full of
life.
‘Oh, George’!’ says the lady, ‘I’m sure you’ll drive over somebody some
day. My dear Gertie, if you could have seen us come down the lane you’d
have thought we were mad. Ah, Ruth, how’s your mamma to-day?’
The quiet lady had come down the little garden path to the carriage,
and the lips of the women meet in a sisterly kiss.
‘I want you to come back to the Hall with us if you can leave your
mamma for an hour,’ says the gentleman called George. ‘Bess has been up
to her mad tricks again, and what do you think she’s done?’ Ruth
smiles, ‘I’m sure I can’t guess.’
‘Why, she’s invited the whole of the Jarvises down, caravan and all,
and, if you please, they are to perform for our special benefit an
entirely new drama, written by Mr. Shakespeare Jarvis.’
‘Oh, Ruth, you will come, won’t you?’ says Bess, clapping her hands,
for Bess Heritage it is. ‘I want only our old friends. You and Gertie
must come—do!’
Ruth laughs and nods her head.
‘That’s right; and now, Ruth, I’ll come in and have a quiet chat with
you, while George talks nonsense to Gertie.’
Gertie laughed and shook her head, but she stayed by the pony-carriage,
for she knew that the two women wanted to talk about the past and about
her, and Gertie didn’t care to hear her own praises sounded.
George was patting his pony and telling Gertie about a new pair he had
bought for Ruth to drive herself, when the stout gentleman approached
nervously, and, giving a little cough, attracted the squire’s
attention.
‘I beg pardon, Squire Heritage,’ he said.
George turned in a moment. He had reason to remember the voice.
‘Why, Duck,’ he exclaimed, ‘what the dickens are you doing here?’
‘Ahem—Squire; to tell you the truth I’m come to see you.’
‘See me!’
‘Yes. I’m afraid our connection wasn’t very pleasant, but—ahem—let
bygones be bygones—and I thought perhaps you wouldn’t mind—ahem—taking
my card, and if you want anything done in my line——’
George took the proffered card.
It announced that Mr. Jabez Duck had embarked in business on his own
account as a private inquiry agent.
George stared at the card, wondering which to do—to admire the man’s
cool impudence or to kick him.
‘You see, sir,’ said Mr. Duck, giving his shiny head another mop,
‘things are altered with me now. When I had the misfortune to have to
do business with you I had an encumbrance, sir, and I couldn’t afford
to go about as an inquiry agent on his own account ought to. Mrs. Duck
wouldn’t hear of it. But now, sir, Mrs. Duck is no more, and I’m going
to try business on my own hook altogether.’
‘Oh, Mrs. Duck’s dead, is she?’ said George, for the sake of saying
something.
‘Yes, sir; she is. She never recovered the shock of Georgina, my
sister, getting her front floor away through calumny, and she went over
and stood in the cold a-shouting down the area at her, and got
bronchitis, and is now an angel.’
‘Indeed,’ said George; ‘I’m very glad—or rather, I mean, I’m very
sorry. If I want any private inquiries made I’ll think of you.’
‘Thank you, squire. I thought I’d come to you for the sake of old
acquaintance. We always made you and the missus as comfortable as we
could when you was lodging with us. Thank you, sir; you won’t forget if
you should, will you? Good day, sir!’
Mr. Jabez bowed to George, took off his hat to Gertie, gave his head
another mop, and waddled slowly out of sight.
Inside the house Bess and Ruth sat together talking. They had grown to
look upon one another as sisters, for the bonds which had united them
in a dark hour of peril to both had grown firmer now the tempest was
over and the light had come again.
And, talking, they spoke of Gertie.
‘God’s ways have been mysterious,’ said Ruth. ‘How little did I think
when I rescued her from that den of wickedness in Little Queer Street
and let my home be hers, that one day she would repay me a hundredfold,
and that when I became penniless and without a friend the child I
reared would take me to her arms and make me the chosen inmate of her
home, the guardian of her wealth, and that through her noble generosity
my mother’s declining years would be cheered and all care for her
future and for mine be spared to me!’
As George drove Bess back to the Hall the young squire told his wife of
Duck’s strange visit and request.
‘It gave me quite a shock, Bess,’ he said: ‘it brought back the old
story so vividly to my mind.’
It was a quiet shady lane, and there was no one looking, so Bess put
her arms round George’s neck and gave him a kiss so suddenly that he
pulled the reins and nearly jerked the pony up on his hind legs.
‘Don’t talk about the old days, George, darling,’ she said; ‘that’s all
done with for ever. The dream we dreamt in Mr. Duck’s parlour has come
true. We are rich, and happy, and contented, and what more do you
want?’
‘Another kiss,’ answered George.
And he had it.
THE END