Part 46 (1/2)

”Here it is at last,” said Wildney. ”Now, then, for the key. Here's a letter for me, hurrah!--two for you, Miss Trevor--_what_ people you young ladies are for writing to each other! None for you, Monty--oh yes! I'm wrong, here's one; but none for Eric.”

”I expected none,” said Eric, sighing; but his eye was fixed earnestly on one of Mrs Trevor's letters. He saw that it was from India, and directed in his father's hand.

Mrs Trevor caught his look. ”Shall I read it aloud to you, dear? Do you think you can stand it? Remember it will be in answer to ours, telling them of--”

”Oh yes, yes,” he said eagerly, ”do let me hear it.”

With instinctive delicacy Montagu and Wildney rose, but Eric pressed them to stay. ”It will help me to bear what mother says, if I see you by me,” he pleaded.

G.o.d forbid that I should transcribe that letter. It was written from the depths of such sorrow as He only can fully sympathise with, who for thirty years pitched his tent in the valley of human misery. By the former mail Mrs Williams had heard of Verny's melancholy death; by the next she had been told that her only other child, Eric, was not dead indeed, but a wandering outcast, marked with the brand of terrible suspicion. Let her agony be sacred; it was G.o.d who sent it, and He only enabled her to endure it. With bent head, and streaming eyes, and a breast that heaved involuntarily with fitful sobs, Eric listened as though to his mother's voice, and only now and then he murmured low to himself, ”O mother, mother, mother--but I am forgiven now. O mother, G.o.d and man have forgiven me, and we shall be at peace again once more.”

Mrs Trevor's eyes grew too dim with weeping to read it all, and f.a.n.n.y finished it. ”Here is a little note from your father, Eric, which dropped out when we opened dear aunt's letter. Shall I read it too?”

”Perhaps not now, love,” said Mrs Trevor. ”Poor Eric is too tired and excited already.”

”Well, then, let me glance at it myself, aunty,” he said. He opened it, read a line or two, and then, with a scream, fell back swooning, while it dropped out of his hands.

Terrified, they picked up the fallen paper; it told briefly, in a few heart-rending words, that, after writing the letter, Mrs Williams had been taken ill; that her life was absolutely despaired of, and that, before the letter reached England, she would, in all human probability, be dead. It conveyed the impression of a soul resigned indeed, and humble, but crushed down to the very earth with the load of mysterious bereavement and irretrievable sorrow.

”Oh, I have killed her, I have killed my mother!” said Eric, in a hollow voice, when he came to himself. ”O G.o.d, forgive me, forgive me!”

They gathered round him they soothed, and comforted, and prayed for him; but his soul refused comfort, and all his strength appeared to have been broken down at once like a feeble reed. At last a momentary energy returned; his eyes were lifted to the gloaming heaven where a few stars had already begun to s.h.i.+ne, and a bright look illuminated his countenance. They listened deeply--”Yes, mother,” he murmured, in broken tones, ”forgiven now, for Christ's dear sake. Oh, Thou merciful G.o.d! Yes, there they are, and we shall meet again. Verny--oh, happy, happy at last--too happy!”

The sounds died away, and his head fell back; for a transient moment more the smile and the brightness played over his fair features like a lambent flame. It pa.s.sed away, and Eric was with those he dearliest loved, in the land where there is no more curse.

”Yes, dearest Eric, forgiven and happy now,” sobbed Mrs Trevor; and her tears fell fast upon the dead boy's face, as she pressed upon it a long, last kiss.

But Montagu, as he consoled the poignancy of Wildney's grief, was reminded by Mrs Trevor's words of that sweet German verse--

Doch sonst an keinem Orte Wohnt die ersehnte Ruh, Nur durch die dunkle Pforte Seht man der Heimath zu.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER FOURTEEN.

CONCLUSION.

And hath that early hope been blessed with truth?

Hath he fulfilled the promise of his youth?

And borne unscathed through danger's stormy field Honour's white wreath and virtue's stainless s.h.i.+eld?

_Harrow. A Prize Poem_.

The other day I was staying with Montagu. He has succeeded to his father's estate, and is the best loved landlord for miles around. He intends to stand for the county at the next general election, and I haven't the shadow of a doubt that he will succeed. If he does, Parliament will have gained a worthy addition. Montagu has the very soul of honour, and he can set off the conclusions of his vigorous judgment, and the treasures of his cultivated taste, with an eloquence that rises to extraordinary grandeur when he is fulminating his scorn at any species of tyranny or meanness.

It was very pleasant to talk with him about our old schooldays in his charming home. We sate by the open window (which looks over his grounds, and then across one of the richest plains in England) one long summer evening, recalling all the vanished scenes and figures of the past, until we almost felt ourselves boys again.

”I have just been staying at Trinity,” said I, ”and Owen, as I suppose you know, is doing brilliantly. He has taken a high first cla.s.s, and they have already elected him fellow and a.s.sistant tutor.”

”Is he liked?”

”Yes, very much. He always used to strike me at school as one of those fellows who are much more likely to be happy and successful as men than they had ever any chance of being as boys. I hope the _greatest_ things of him; but have you heard anything of Duncan lately?”