Michael’s Egypt had not been a very terrible house of bondage, and the darker moments of his abduction did not dwell on his memory; but years later, when first he tasted beer, he put down the glass with a shudder, as the smell and taste brought back a sense of distress, confusion, and horror in a gas-lit, crowded bar, full of loud-voiced, rough figures, and resounding with strange language and fierce threats to make him swallow the draught which, no doubt, had been drugged.
p. 277CHAPTER XL
JOY WELL-NIGH INCREDIBLE
The midday letters were a riddle to the ladies at Malvern.
‘Out all day,’ said Mary, ‘that is well. He will get strong out boating.’
‘I hope Herbert has come home to take him out,’ said Constance.
‘Or he may be yachting. I wonder he does not say who is taking him out. I am glad that he can feel that sense of enjoyment.’
Yet that rejoicing seemed to be almost an effort to the poor mother who craved for a longer letter, and perhaps almost felt as if her Frank were getting out of sympathy with her grief—and what could be the good news?
‘Herbert must have passed!’ said Constance.
‘I hope he has, but the expression is rather strong for that,’ said Lady Adela.
‘Perhaps Ida is engaged to that Mr. Deyncourt? Was that his name?’ said Lady Northmoor languidly.
‘Oh! that would be delicious,’ cried Constance, p. 278‘and Ida has grown much more thoughtful lately, so perhaps she would do for a clergyman’s wife.’
‘Is Ida better?’ asked her aunt, who had been much drawn towards the girl by hearing that her health had suffered from grief for Michael.
‘Mamma does not mention her in her last letter, but poor Ida is really much more delicate than one would think, though she looks so strong. This would be delightful!’
‘Yet, joy well-nigh incredible!’ said her aunt, meditatively. ‘Were not those the words? It would not be like your uncle to put them in that way unless it were something—even more wonderful, and besides, why should he not write it to me?’
‘Oh—h!’ cried Constance, with a leap, rather than a start. ‘It can be only one thing.’
‘Don’t, don’t, don’t!’ cried poor Mary; ‘you must not, Constance, it would kill me to have the thought put into my head only to be lost.’
Constance looked wistfully at Lady Adela; but the idea she had suggested had created a restlessness, and her aunt presently left the room. Then Constance said—
‘Lady Adela, may I tell you something? You know that poor dear little Mite was never found?’
‘Oh! a boat must have picked him up,’ cried Amice; ‘and he is coming back.’
‘Gently, Amy; hush,’ said the mother, ‘Constance has more to tell.’
‘Yes,’ said Constance. ‘My friend, Rose Rollstone, who lives just by our house at Westhaven, and was going back to London the night that Mite was lost, wrote to me that she was sure she had seen his p. 279face just then. She thought, and I thought it was one of those strange things one hears of sights at the moment of death. So I never told of it, but now I cannot help fancying—’
‘Oh! I am sure,’ cried Amice.
Lady Adela thought the only safe way would be to turn the two young creatures out to pour out their rapturous surmises to one another on the winding paths of the Malvern hills, and very glad was she to have done so, when by and by that other telegram was put into her hands.
Then, when Mary, unable to sit still, though with trembling limbs, came back to the sitting-room, with a flush on her pale cheek, excited by the sound at the door, Lady Adela pointed to the yellow paper, which she had laid within the Gospel, open at the place.
Mary sank into a chair.
‘It can’t be a false hope,’ she gasped.
‘He would never have sent this, if it were not a certainty,’ said Adela, kneeling down by her, and holding her hands, while repeating what Constance had said.
A few words were spent on wonder and censure on the girl’s silence, more unjust than they knew, but hardly wasted, since they relieved the tension. Mary slid down on her knees beside her friend, and then came a silence of intense heart-swelling, choking, and unformed, but none the less true thanksgiving, and ending in a mutual embrace and an outcry of Mary’s—
‘Oh, Adela! how good you are, you with no such hope’—and that great blessed shower of tears that p. 280relieved her was ostensibly the burst of sympathy for the bereaved mother with no such restoration in view. Then came soothing words, and then the endeavour with dazed eyes and throbbing hearts to look out the trains from Liverpool, whence, to their amazement, they saw the telegram had started, undoubtedly from Lord Northmoor. There was not too large a choice, and finally Lady Adela made the hope seem real by proposing preparations for the child’s supper and bed—things of which Mary seemed no more to have dared to think than if she had been expecting a little spirit; but which gave her hope substance, and inspired her with fresh energy and a new strength, as she ran up and downstairs, directing her maid, who cried for joy at the news, and then going out to purchase those needments which had become such tokens of exquisite hope and joy. After this had once begun, she seemed really incapable of sitting still, for every moment she thought of something her boy would want or would like, or hurried to see if all was right.
Constance begged again and again to run on the messages, but she would not allow it, and when the girl looked grieved, and said she was tiring herself to death, Lady Adela said—
