It is as much above my power, as beyond my purpose, to tell how that ancient and noble gentleman, after so much worry from the long neglect of Providence, took (as if he had never deserved it) this goodness of the Lord to him. Of course, in my class of life, we cannot be always dwelling on children; whose nature is provoking always, and in nothing more so than that they will come when not wanted; yet are not forthcoming with the folk who can afford them. Nevertheless, I think that if the Lord had allowed any thief of a fellow (much more one of His own ministers) to steal two grandchildren of mine, and make a savage of one baby, and of the other a castaway, the whole of my piety would have been very hard pushed to produce any gratitude. Sir Philip, however, did appear most truly desirous to thank God for this great mercy vouchsafed to him; even before he had thoroughly gone through the ins and outs of the evidence. For he begged us to excuse him, while he should go to see to our comfort; and two fine bottles of wine (white and red) appeared, and began to disappear, under my hatches mainly, before our noble host came back to set us a good example. And when he came he had quite forgotten to dust the knees of some fine kerseymere, and the shins of black silk stockings.
Deep sense of religion is quite in its place when a man has had one arm shot off, still more so if both arms are gone, and after a leg, indispensable. Nevertheless it must not be intruded upon anyone; no, not even by the chaplain, till the doctor shakes his head. Knowing also that Colonel Lougher had a tendency towards it (enough to stop the decanters if he should get upon that subject with the arguments it sticks fast in), I was delighted to see Delushy slipping into the room as if she had known the place for a century. The General clearly had managed to visit her during the time of his absence from us; what passed between them matters not, except that he must have acknowledged her. For now she went up to him and kissed him; rather timidly, perhaps, but still she touched his forehead. Then he arose and stood very upright, as if he had never begun to stoop, and passing his arm round her delicate waist, both her hands he took in his. And as they faced us, we were struck with the likeness between blooming youth and worn but yet majestic age.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “or rather I should call you kind good friends, you have brought me not only a grandchild, but the very one I would have chosen if the whole world gave me choice. By-and-by you shall see her stand by the picture of my dear and long-lamented wife. That, I think, will convince you that we want no further evidence. For me, these thumbnails are enough. Bertha, show your thumbnails.”
She laughed her usual merry laugh (although she had been crying so) while she spread her dainty hands, exactly as she used to spread them, when she was only two years old, with me alone to look at her.
“Here it is, sir,” cried the General, overlooking me, in the rush of his sentiments towards the Colonel: “here is the true Bampfylde mark. Even the Bassets have it not, nor the Traceys, nor the St. Albyns. Will you oblige me by observing that these two thumbnails have a most undoubted right and left to them? Bertha, do try to keep still for a moment.”
“Well, I declare,” said the Colonel, calmly taking out his eyeglass; “yes, I declare you are right, my good sir. Here is a most evident right and left—Andalusia, do stand still—not only in the half-moons at the base, but in the vein, and what I may call the radiants of the pinkness. I cannot express my meaning, but—my darling, come and kiss me.”
This Delushy did at once, as for years she used to do; and not being certain even now whether she ought to forsake the Colonel for a General, though proved to be a very fine and newly-turned up Grandfather. None of us had thought of her, and the many shifts of female wind, coming to pass perhaps inside her little brain and heart so. Wherefore this poor David, who desires always to be the last, but by force of nature is compelled forever to take the lead—I it was who got her off to bed, that we might talk of her.
LXVII
Dog Eats Dog
To a man, whose time of life begins to be a subject of some consideration to him, when the few years still in hope can be counted on a hand, and may not need a finger; and with the tide of this world ebbing to the inevitable sea—to him there is scarcely any sweet and gentle pastime more delightful than to sit on a bank of ancient moss, beside a tidal river, and watch the decreasing waters, and prove his own eternity by casting a pebble into them.
Hence it was that Sir Philip Bampfylde, on the very morning after I gave him back his grandchild, sat gazing into the ebb of the Tawe, some fifty yards below the spot, whence Jack Wildman’s father carried off so wickedly that helpless pair of children. Here it was my privilege to come up to Sir Philip, and spread before him my humble reasons for having preferred the kitchen last night to the dining-room and the drawing-room. It was consistent with my nature; and he, though wishing otherwise, agreed not to be offended.
Then
