Misunderstood

There was no sound, no life anywhere; the twilight was creeping over the silent hall and staircase, and he knew it was deepening in the uninhabited rooms below. And then, as if to mock him with the contrast, came before him so vivid a recollection of life with his mother in the house; of her voice and her laugh upon that staircase; of her presence in those rooms; so clear and distinct a vision of her soft eyes and gentle smile, that the motherless child could bear it no longer, and covering his face with his hands to shut out the sight of the emptiness, he fled away down the passage, as if he thought to leave the desolation behind.

But the emptiness was with him as he went; all down the stairs and through the hall it pursued him; it gained upon him as he stood with his hand upon the drawing-room door; it preceded him into the darkened room, and was waiting for him when he entered.

The light that came in through the chinks of the shutters was very faint, but his longing eye sought the picture, and he could just distinguish the sweet face and the smiling babe in her arms.

He ran forward, and threw himself on the sofa beneath it.

"Mother!" he sobbed, "I want you back so much! Every one is angry with me, and I am so very miserable!"

Cold, blank silence all around; mother and child smiled on, unconscious of his words; even as he gazed the light faded away from the picture, and he was left alone in the gathering darkness!

In vain he tried to fancy himself once more the child in the picture; in vain he tried to fancy he felt her arms around him, and her shoulder against his head. It would not do! In fits of passion or disobedience he had come here, and the memory of his mother had soothed him, and sent him away penitent; but in this dreadful sense of loneliness he wanted comfort, and of comfort he found none.

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Yet was there comfort near, if he would but ask for it, and of the very kind he wanted: "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you." He knew it not; he cried not for it. He was not ignorant of God's omnipresence; in ordinary times the boy believed with a child's simple faith that God was always near him, but in the hour of his trouble he was incapable of deriving any comfort from the knowledge, incapable of any thought but his own sorrow.

Children of a larger growth, but children in understanding still, do not many of us, in spite of our maturer experience, do likewise? "There is no help," we say; "our trouble is greater than we can bear." We lie like the child, crushed and despairing, and God, who at other times we feel to be so near, seems hidden from us altogether.

But thank God it is only seems, not is. He is unchangeable, and unaffected by our changeability. Hidden, it may be, by the cloud we have ourselves raised, the dark cloud of hopelessness, He is still there, the Same whose presence we realise so fully in happier moments. "He," says a writer of the present century, "is immutable, unchangeable, while we are different every hour. What He is in Himself, the great unalterable I Am, not what we in this or that moment feel Him to be, that is our hope."

The comfort, then, for us and for the stricken child is, that though we may not at such times do our part, He is ever ready to do His; and it would almost seem as if He were providing for this state of feeling when he says, "Before they call, I will answer." But what could be done for the child in the terrible hour of his trouble? We know not, but God knew. The little heart was open before Him, and He knew that his sorrow would flee at morning light, and that he only wanted comfort for the present moment. So, looking pityingly down upon the lonely child, He sent him the only thing that could help him—laid gently upon his heavy eyelids the only gift that could do him any good—giving him the peace of unconsciousness till the hour of sorrow and sighing should pass away!

There one of the maids found him an hour or so later, and carried him up to bed without waking him.

CHAPTER X

Humphrey slept late the next morning, and the sun was streaming on his face when he awoke.

He sprang out of bed with an exclamation of delight at seeing such a fine day, and then started back in surprise at finding himself in a strange room.

Recollections of last night were beginning to steal over him, when the door opened, and Jane came in.

"At last! Master Humphrey. Why I thought you were never going to wake up! Master Miles has been asking for you for ever so long!"

"Then he's better, is he?" said Humphrey, eagerly.

"Better!" exclaimed Jane, in a sprightly tone; "why bless you, he's quite well."

Jane had been the one to find Humphrey in the drawing-room the night before, and had guessed by his tear-stained face how it had been.

She was not equivocating; Miles had taken a turn for the better in the night, and there was no further anxiety about him.

Humphrey's spirits rose immediately to their usual height; he dressed himself in a great hurry, and soon the two little brothers were together again.

Humphrey did not allude to his troubles of the evening before. Perhaps he had already forgotten them; or if they did recur to his memory, it was with a dull, dead sense of pain which he had no wish to call into life again.

His was a nature that was only too glad to escape from such recollections. His buoyant spirits and volatile disposition helped him to throw off sad memories, and never had he been gayer or wilder than on this morning, as he laughed and talked, and played by his brother's bedside.

It was a glorious day, Miles was nearly well, his father was coming (in obedience to Virginie's letter), and life seemed to him one flood of sunshine.

Virginie, however, still shaky from her late anxiety, and with her head ominously tied up with flannel, looked grimly on his mirth. She did not understand the boy: how should she? She was feeling very sore with him for having caused all this trouble; she was, of course, ignorant of what he had suffered, and she looked upon his noisy merriment as only another proof of his usual heartlessness.

Humphrey was not in the room when his father arrived, having gone out for a run in the garden; so Virginie had no check in pouring out her complaint.

Sir Everard was startled at the effect the short illness had had upon Miles, and listened more patiently than usual.

The delicate child looked so much like his mother as he lay in bed, with his flushed cheeks and lustrous eyes, that the vague fear about him, that almost always haunted the father, took a more definite shape.

Certainly Virginie's account of Humphrey's disobedience was not calculated to soften him towards the boy, and he really felt more angry with him than he had ever done before.

Little Miles was particularly engaging that day, so delighted to see his father, and so caressing in his ways, that Humphrey's want of heart seemed to stand out in sharper contrast. Sir Everard could not tear himself away from the little fellow for some time, and the more coaxing the child was, the more painfully came home to the father the thought of having so nearly lost him.

On descending from the nursery, Sir Everard went into the library, and ringing the bell, desired that Master Duncombe should be sent to him immediately.

"I don't suppose I shall make any impression upon him," he said to himself while he waited, "but I must try." He never expected much of Humphrey, but he was hardly prepared for the boisterous opening of the door, and the gay aspect of the boy as he bounded into the room.

Sir Everard was, as we have seen, always loth to scold or punish either of his motherless children, and when it must be done, he schooled himself to do it from a sense of duty. But the bold, and, as it seemed to him, defiant way in which the boy presented himself, fairly angered him, and it was in a tone of no forced displeasure that he exclaimed, "What do you mean, sir, by coming into the room like that?"

Now Humphrey had been busy working in his garden when his father's message had reached him, in happy forgetfulness of his recent conduct and his brother's recent danger.

In the excitement of hearing of his father's arrival, he had overlooked the probability of his displeasure; and it was with unfeigned astonishment that he heard himself thus greeted. His wondering expression only irritated his father the more.

"Don't stand there, looking as if you thought you had done nothing wrong," he exclaimed testily; "do you think you are to lead your poor little brother into danger, and make him ill, and then not to be found fault with? Don't you know that you have disobeyed me, and broken your promise? Did I not forbid you to go near that pond? I tell you I won't have it, and you shall go to school if you can't behave better at home. Do you hear me, sir? what do you mean by behaving in this way?"

Humphrey understood now. His lips quivered, and his cheek flushed at hearing himself so sternly spoken to, and he dared not attempt to answer, lest he should disgrace himself by tears.

Sir Everard's anger soon evaporated.

"You see, Humphrey," he went on more gently, "it is always the same thing. Day after day and week after week I have the same complaints of you. I should have thought you were old enough now to remember that Miles is very delicate, and that you would have taken care of him, instead of leading him into mischief. Do you know," he concluded, suddenly dropping his voice, "that we have very nearly lost your little brother?"

To Sir Everard's surprise, Humphrey burst into a passion of tears. The words brought back to him the suffering of last night with a sharp pang, and his whole frame shook with sobs.

Sir Everard was instantly melted. Like most men, the sight of tears had a magical effect upon him; and he took the child on his knee, and tried to comfort him.

"There, there," he said soothingly, as he stroked the curly head, "that will do; I must not expect old heads on young shoulders; but you must try and remember what I tell you, and not disobey me any more. And now give me a kiss, and run out, and have a game of cricket."

Humphrey lifted up his tear-stained face and gladly received the kiss of forgiveness.

A few minutes after he was playing single wicket in the field with the footman, without a trace of sorrow on his countenance or a sad thought in his heart.

But Sir Everard remained in the library, perturbed and uneasy. Miles's fragile appearance had made him nervous, and he was thinking how easily any little chill might bring on inflammation again. He was well versed in all the sudden relapses and as sudden improvements of delicate lungs. Had he not watched them hour by hour? Did he not know every step? It was an attack like this that had preceded his wife's slow fading. Daily had he watched the flush deepen and the features sharpen on a face which was so like the little face up-stairs, that, as he thought of them both, he could hardly separate the two.

Something must be done to prevent the recurrence of any risks for Miles. But what? It was clear that Humphrey was not to be trusted; and yet Sir Everard could not bear to spoil the children's fun by separating them, or by letting Virginie mount in too strict guard over them. She was a nervous woman, and too apt to think everything they did had danger in it.

"Boys must amuse themselves," he reflected; "and at Humphrey's age it is natural they should do extraordinary things. I don't want to make him a muff." Involuntarily he smiled at the idea of Humphrey being a muff. "How easily Miles might have fallen into that horrid pond! The slightest push from Humphrey, who never looks where he is going, would have sent him in. Would he ever have recovered the effects of a wholesale soaking? However," he concluded, half out loud, as he rose to return to the nursery, "the session is nearly over, and I shall be down here, and able to look after them myself. And meanwhile I shall remain on for a day or two, till Miles is quite well again."

CHAPTER XI

It was a pleasant little holiday that Sir Everard spent with his children during the days that followed; and often in after years did he look back upon it with a tender regret.

Miles's health improved steadily, and in a little while he was allowed to be carried in the afternoon to his father's dressing-room where, nestled in a huge arm-chair, with his father and Humphrey sitting by, he passed some very happy hours. Sometimes they played games, or else Sir Everard would read out loud from a book of fairy tales he had brought from London. One evening he read a story which greatly delighted both little boys. It was about a wonderful mirror, which had the power of showing to its owner what any of his absent friends might be doing at the moment he was looking into it.

"Oh, how I wish I could have such a mirror!" said Humphrey, very earnestly.

"How I wish I could!" echoed Miles.

"Do you?" said Sir Everard; "I wonder why."

Humphrey did not answer; he was gazing out of the window in deep thought.

"Who would you look for, my little man?" asked Sir Everard of Miles.

"I should look for you, dear Fardie."

"But I am here, darling."

"Not always," said Miles, laying his little hand caressingly on Sir Everard's. "When you are away in London, I should like to look in and see what you are doing."

It was by these engaging little words and ways, that Miles had wound himself so closely round his father's heart.

"So you would like to see me when I am away," he said, stroking the child's hand, "do you miss me when I'm not with you?"

"So much, Fardie; I wish you would never go. Humphie, don't we miss Fardie dreadfully when he's away, and wish he would never go?"

Sir Everard glanced at his elder boy, as if hoping to hear him confirm his little brother's words, but Humphrey was still looking thoughtfully up, out of the window, and took no notice.

"What is he thinking about?" whispered Sir Everard to Miles.

"I don't know," said Miles, softly; "perhaps he's wishing very hard for a mirror."

Whatever the boy was wishing for, it must have been something which he felt he could never have, for the brown eyes were full of tears as they gazed up into the blue sky.

"Wait a minute," breathed Miles, "he'll say how we miss you, when he's done thinking; often, when he's thinking, he doesn't answer me till he's quite done what he's thinking about."

With the tears still standing in them, the eyes suddenly sparkled with a new feeling, and Humphrey sprang to the window, exclaiming,—

"A hawk! I do declare; and he'll have the sparrow in a minute!"

Sir Everard looked disappointed, and drew Miles closer to him.

"He's not thinking about us, is he, darling?"

"Eh!" exclaimed Humphrey, starting, "were you speaking to me? What did you say, Miles?"

"It was about the glass, Humphie; I said we should like so much to see what Fardie is doing in London sometimes."

"Oh, wouldn't it be fun!" said Humphrey, seating himself by his brother; "sometimes we should see him in his club, and sometimes in a Hansom cab, and sometimes we should see you making a speech in the House of Parliament, shouldn't we, father, with your arm out, and a great sheet all round you, like the statue of Mr. Pitt down-stairs?"

Sir Everard laughed.

"Not very often," I think.

"How should we see you, Fardie?"

"I'm afraid, if you looked late in the evening, you would often see me so," he answered, folding his arms, and shutting his eyes.

"What, asleep!" exclaimed the children.

"Fast asleep," returned their father.

"Isn't the Queen very angry with you?" inquired Miles.

"The Queen is generally asleep herself at such hours."

"What! in the House of Parliament?"

"No; but in one or other of her palaces."

"But she isn't always asleep at night," said Humphrey, in a superior tone; "sometimes she sits up very late, and has a ball. I know a picture of her giving a ball, in the old book of prints down-stairs."

The volume in question bore the date of 1710, and the engraving represented the court of Queen Anne, but it was all the same to Humphrey.

"Do you ever go to the Queen's ball Fardie?" inquired Miles.

"Yes, dear, I have been, but not for a long time."

"Father's too old for balls now," observed Humphrey. "Ain't you, father?"

"My dancing days are over, yes," said Sir Everard, absently. He was thinking how lovely his wife had looked at the last court ball he had been to.

"Do they dance 'Up the middle and down again,' Fardie?"

"No," answered Sir Everard, smiling, "quadrilles and valses mostly."

"I suppose when you were young and went to balls, they used to dance the minuet?" said Humphrey. "Used you to wear a pig-tail, father?"

"Upon my word!" said Sir Everard, "why, how old do you think I am?"

The children had no idea, and amused themselves for the next ten minutes by trying to guess, their conjectures varying between sixty and ninety.

"Will you come for a run, father?" said Humphrey, presently.

"It's a little hot for running, isn't it?" answered Sir Everard; "but if you are tired of being indoors, you can go in the garden, and I will join you in about an hour."

"We might go to the village, mightn't we, and spend my pennies? Dyson's got his trumpet, so there's nothing to save for, and I should like to spend them."

"Very well: where shall I find you?"

"I shall be feeding my jackdaw, or working in my garden; or, perhaps," after a moment's reflection, "I might be sitting at the top of the apple tree, or running along the kitchen garden wall. But if you don't find me in any of those places, look in the hen-house. I might be getting an egg there for Miles' tea."

"But isn't the hen-house kept locked?"

"Oh, yes, but that doesn't matter a bit. I always squeeze myself through the hen's little trap door."

"You don't expect me to do the same, I hope?"

Humphrey's sense of the ridiculous was tickled by the idea of his father's tall form struggling through the little hole of a few inches wide; and his merry laugh echoed through the room.

"What fun it would be!" he exclaimed, "you'd stick in the middle, and not be able to get in or out. How you would kick!"

Little Miles laughed till he coughed, and Sir Everard was obliged to dismiss Humphrey to the garden.

Humphrey was not engaged in any of the employments he had mentioned when his father joined him an hour later. He was standing gazing thoughtfully at the lame jackdaw hopping about on his wooden leg.

"What a funny boy you are," said his father, laying a hand on his shoulder. "I do believe you care more for that ugly old jackdaw than for anything else that you have. He always seems to me the most uninteresting of creatures and I'm sure he is very ungrateful, for the kinder you are to him the crosser he gets."

"Yes, he's very cross, poor old fellow!" said Humphrey. "Look!" holding out his hand, which bore unmistakable evidence of a bird's beak, "how he's pecked me. He always does whenever I feed him."

"I should almost be inclined not to feed him then."

"I couldn't let him starve, you know. Besides, I don't wonder he's cross. It's enough to make any one angry to be always hopping about in one little place, instead of having the whole world to fly about in. And if it wasn't for me," he added, half to himself, "he would be flying about now."

Sir Everard did not catch the last words, but the boy's face reminded him that he had touched on a painful subject, and he hastened to change it by proposing they should start for the village.

Humphrey brightened up directly, and was soon talking as gaily as usual. The painfulness of the subject consisted in this.

One day, Humphrey and Miles were amusing themselves in their gardens, when the jackdaw, then young and active, came flying past.

Humphrey without the slightest idea of touching it, flung a stone at it, exclaiming, "Get away, old fellow!"

But so unerring was his aim, that the stone struck the bird on the wing, and brought it struggling and fluttering to the ground.

Dolly, the laundry-maid, was close at hand, and she never forgot Humphrey's burst of grief and remorse, when, on picking up the jackdaw, they found both leg and wing broken. That a living creature should be deprived of its powers by his means was more than the tender-hearted child could bear, and for a long while he was inconsolable.

In due time the bird had been supplied with a wooden leg through Dolly, by whom it had ever since been carefully tended, but its life, in Humphrey's eyes, was over; and he never passed the cage without a pang. He seldom spoke of it, it was too sore a subject; but his attention to the lame bird had from that day to this never relaxed for an instant.

On the way to the village, Sir Everard questioned him on his progress with his lessons.

Humphrey always gave a capital account of himself; reading, writing, French, everything, according to him, was going on as swimmingly as possible.

Sir Everard's faith in these reports had been rather shaken since the memorable occasion when, relying on Humphrey's confident assertion, that he now knew the auxiliary verbs perfectly, he had, with a father's pride, called upon him suddenly to repeat the verb "avoir" to his grandmother. She was a lady of the old school, and a great stickler for early education: and he had been rather nettled by an observation that had dropped from her, to the effect that Humphrey was rather backward.

"Indeed, mother," he had answered, "I think few boys of his age know so much of French. He speaks it perfectly, and is well grounded in the grammar."

To prove which, Humphrey had been called out of the garden, and, to his father's dismay, had conjugated the first tense of the verb in the following manner:—

J'ai

Tu as

Il a

Nous sommes

Vous étes

Ils sont.

Conversation did not flag for a moment as they walked along.

On the subject of history, Humphrey not only professed to be, but was, well informed. It gave food to his imagination, and he delighted in it. Sir Everard felt quite brushed up in the early parts of history before they reached the village, and Humphrey himself was so taken up with his subject, that he readily agreed to give up his expedition to the shop, so that they might extend their walk by returning home another way.

"We shall pass little lame Tom, anyhow," he said, "and I can give my pennies to him instead."

Lame Tom was a little cripple, who sat all day long in a little wooden chair, and was an object of great commiseration to Humphrey. A creature who had never known what it was to walk, run, or climb, and had to sit still in a chair from year's end to year's end! How keenly such a condition appealed to the pity of such a nature as Humphrey's!

He gave him his pennies as he passed, and then resumed his conversation with his father.

It was nearly dinner-time when they reached home, and Miles was eagerly waiting for his game of "Spelicans" with Sir Everard. He was, however, never quite happy unless Humphrey was included in his amusements, if he happened to be present: so after a time "Spelicans" was changed to "Old Maid," a game of which both boys were particularly fond.

No "lady of a certain age" could have shown more eagerness to get rid of the fatal Queen than did the two little brothers, and they played as if their whole future depended upon it.

Great was their delight and exultation when, at the end of the game, they found they had both escaped the fate of single blessedness; and, with great clapping of hands and other demonstrations of triumph, Sir Everard was informed that he "would be an old maid."

CHAPTER XII

It was a lovely day, real harvest weather, when Sir Everard Duncombe and his two little boys took their way to the corn-field to see the new machine at work.

Sir Everard was going up to town that evening, but it was for the last time; and then, to the children's delight, he had promised to come down for good, and had settled that the Harvest Home should take place early in the ensuing week.

The corn-field presented a gay appearance when they reached it. The new machine, drawn by two fine horses, and driven by the bailiff, was careering along the corn, with the reapers all running by the side. Down fell the golden grain on all sides, and eager hands collected and bound it up.