‘You haven’t gone far enough in your mathematics, you see, Daisy. You think one and one—’
‘Make two. So I say.’
‘I’ve gone into the higher branches.’
‘I didn’t think you were so simple and commonplace. It would be so stupid to think he must—just because he could not help making this discovery.’
‘All for want of the higher branches of mathematics! One plus one—equals one.’
‘One minus common sense, plus folly, plus romance, minus anything to do. Your equation is worthy of Mrs. Harvey Anderson. I gave her a good dose of the ‘Diseases of Climate!”
Aubrey was looking at Ethel all the time Gertrude was triumphing; and finally he said, ‘I’ve no absolute faith in disinterested philanthropy to a younger brother—whatever I had before I went to the Tyrol.’
‘What has that to do with it?’ asked Gertrude. ‘Everybody was cut up, and wanted a change—and you more than all. I do believe the possibility of a love affair absolutely drives people mad: and now they must needs saddle it upon poor Tom—just the one of the family who is not so stupid, but has plenty of other things to think about.’
‘So you think it a stupid pastime?’
‘Of course it is. Why, just look. Hasn’t everybody in the family turned stupid, and of no use, as soon at they went and fell in love! Only good old Ethel here has too much sense, and that’s what makes her such a dear old gurgoyle. And Harry—he is twice the fun after he comes home, before he gets his fit of love. And all the story books that begin pleasantly, the instant that love gets in, they are just alike—so stupid! And now, if you haven’t done it yourself, you want to lug poor innocent Tom in for it.’
‘When your time comes, may I be there to see!’
He retreated from her evident designs of clapper-clawing him; and she turned round to Ethel with, ‘Now, isn’t it stupid, Ethel!’
‘Very stupid to think all the zest of life resides in one particular feeling,’ said Ethel; ‘but more stupid to talk of what you know nothing about.’
Aubrey put in his head for a hurried farewell, and, ‘Telegraph to me when Mrs. Thomas May comes home.’
‘If Mrs. Thomas May comes home, I’ll—’
‘Give her that chair cover,’ said Ethel; and her idle needlewoman, having been eight months working one corner of it, went off into fits of laughter, regarding its completion as an equally monstrous feat with an act of cannibalism on the impossible Mrs. Thomas May.
How different were these young things, with their rhodomontade and exuberant animation and spirits, from him in whom all the sparkle and aspiration of life seemed extinguished!
CHAPTER XXVII
A cup was at my lips: it pass’d As passes the wild desert blast!
****
I woke—around me was a gloom And silence of the tomb; But in that awful solitude That little spirit by me stood— But oh, how changed! —Thoughts in Past Years
Under Richard’s kind let-alone system, Leonard was slowly recovering tone. First he took to ruling lines in the Cocksmoor account-books, then he helped in their audit; and with occupation came the sense of the power of voluntary exertion. He went and came freely, and began to take long rambles in the loneliest parts of the heath and plantations, while Richard left him scrupulously to his own devices, and rejoiced to see them more defined and vigorous every day. The next stop was to assist in the night-school where Richard had hitherto toiled single-handed among very rough subjects. The technical training and experience derived from Leonard’s work under the schoolmaster at Portland were invaluable; and though taking the lead was the last thing he would have thought of, he no sooner entered the school than attention and authority were there, and Richard found that what had to him been a vain and patient struggle was becoming both effective and agreeable. Interest in his work was making Leonard cheerful and alert, though still grave, and shrinking from notice—avoiding the town by daylight, and only coming to Dr. May’s in the dark evenings.
On the last Sunday in Advent, Richard was engaged to preach at his original curacy, and that the days before and after it should likewise be spent away from home was insisted on after the manner of the friends of hard- working clergy. He had the less dislike to going that he could leave his school-work to Leonard, who was to be housed at his father’s, and there was soon perceived to have become a much more ordinary member of society than on his first arrival.
One evening, there was a loud peal at the door-bell, and the maid—one of Ethel’s experiments of training— came in.
‘Please, sir, a gentleman has brought a cockatoo and a letter and a little boy from the archdeacon.’
‘Archdeacon!’ cried Dr. May, catching sight of the handwriting on the letter and starting up. ‘Archdeacon Norman—’
‘One of Norman’s stray missionaries and a Maori newly caught; oh, what fun!’ cried Daisy, in ecstasy.
At that moment, through the still open door, walking as if he had lived there all his life, there entered the prettiest little boy that ever was seen—a little knickerbocker boy, with floating rich dark ringlets, like a miniature cavalier coming forth from a picture, with a white cockatoo on his wrist. Not in the least confused, he went straight towards Dr. May and said, ‘Good-morning, grandpapa.’
‘Ha! And who may you be, my elfin prince?’ said the Doctor.
‘I’m Dickie—Richard Rivers May—I’m not an elfin prince,’ said the boy, with a moment’s hurt feeling. ‘Papa sent me.’ By that time the boy was fast in his grandfather’s embrace, and was only enough released to give him space to answer the eager question, ‘Papa—papa here?’
‘Oh no; I came with Mr. Seaford.’
The Doctor hastily turned Dickie over to the two aunts, and hastened forth to the stranger, whose name he well knew as a colonist’s son, a favourite and devoted clerical pupil of Norman’s.
