Part 54 (1/2)
”Ah, but I mean to speak to him.”
”Once only, and then he was mad. He was sitting up with her Majesty, waiting for intelligence which I brought. His Royal Highness took the despatches from me, but the King insisted on seeing me.”
”And what did he say, father? Do tell us,” said Alice eagerly.
”Little enough, my love,” said the Captain, leaning back. ”He asked, 'Is this the officer who brought the despatches, York?' And his Royal Highness said 'Yes.' Then the King said, 'You bring good news, sir; I was going to ask you some questions, but they are all gone out of my head. Go and get your supper; get your supper, sir.' Poor old gentleman. He was a kindly old man, and I had a great respect for him.
Alice, sing us a song, my love.”
She sang them ”The Burial of Sir John Moore” with such perfect taste and pathos that Sam felt as if the candle had gone out when she finished. Then she turned round and said to him, ”You ought to like that song; your father was one of the actors in it.”
”He has often told me the story,” said Sam, ”but I never knew what a beautiful one it was till I heard you sing it.”
All pleasant evenings must end, and at last she rose to go to bed. But Sam, before he went off to the land of happy dreams, saw that the little white glove which he had noticed in the morning was lying neglected on the floor; so he quietly secured and kept it. And, last year, opening his family Bible to refer to certain entries, now pretty numerous, in the beginning; I found a little white glove pinned to the fly-leaf, which I believe to be the same glove here spoken of.
Chapter XXVIII
A GENTLEMAN FROM THE WARS.
I need hardly say that Sam was sorry when the two days which he had allowed himself for his visit were over. But that evening, when he mentioned the fact that he was going away in the morning, the Captain, Alice, and Jim, all pressed him so eagerly to stay another week, that he consented; the more as there was no earthly reason he knew of why he should go home.
And the second morning from that on which he should have been at home, going out to the stable before breakfast, he saw his father come riding over the plain, and, going to meet him, found that he, too, meditated a visit to the Captain.
”I thought you were come after me, father,” said Sam. ”By the bye, do you know that the Captain's daughter, Miss Alice, is come home?”
”Indeed!” said the Major; ”and what sort of a body is she?”
”Oh, she is well enough. Something like Jim. Plays very well on the piano, and all that sort of thing, you know. Sings too.”
”Is she pretty?” asked the Major.
”Oh, well, I suppose she is,” said Sam. ”Yes; I should say that a great many people would consider her pretty.”
They had arrived at the door, and the groom had taken the Major's horse, when Alice suddenly stepped out and confronted them.
The Major had been prepared to see a pretty girl, but he was by no means prepared for such a radiant, lovely, blus.h.i.+ng creature as stepped out of the darkness into the fresh morning to greet him, clothed in white, bareheaded, with
”A single rose in her hair.”
As he told his wife, a few days after, he was struck ”all of a heap;”
and Sam heard him whisper to himself, ”By Jove!” before he went up to Alice and spoke.
”My dear young lady, you and I ought not to be strangers, for I recognise you from my recollections of your mother. Can you guess who I am?”
”I recognise you from my recollections of your son, sir,” said Alice, with a sly look at Sam; ”I should say that you were Major Buckley.”
The Major laughed, and, taking her hand, carried it to his lips: a piece of old-fas.h.i.+oned courtesy she had never experienced before, and which won her heart amazingly.