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| author | pgww <pgww@lists.pglaf.org> | 2026-02-19 06:40:22 -0800 |
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| committer | pgww <pgww@lists.pglaf.org> | 2026-02-19 06:40:22 -0800 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes index 6833f05..d7b82bc 100644 --- a/.gitattributes +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -1,3 +1,4 @@ -* text=auto -*.txt text -*.md text +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt index 6c72794..b5dba15 100644 --- a/LICENSE.txt +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -7,5 +7,5 @@ the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize -this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +this book outside of the United States should confirm copyright status under the laws that apply to them. @@ -1,2 +1,2 @@ -Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for eBook #77847 -(https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77847) +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +book #77847 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77847) diff --git a/images/cover.jpg b/images/cover.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 9219548..0000000 --- a/images/cover.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/tim.txt b/tim.txt deleted file mode 100644 index dc994bf..0000000 --- a/tim.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,5370 +0,0 @@ -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77847 *** - - - - - TIM - - - ‘Thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women’ - - - London - MACMILLAN AND CO. - AND NEW YORK - 1891 - - - _First Edition October 1891_ - _Reprinted November 1891_ - - - - - _To her for whose entertainment it was originally written, this - story belongs as of right. On the shrine of her deathless memory I - lay my little book._ - - - - -CHAPTER I - - And he wandered away and away - With Nature the dear old nurse, - Who sang to him, night and day, - The rhymes of the universe. - - LONGFELLOW’S _Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz_. - - -Tim’s real name was not Tim: so much is certain. What it was, I have -never inquired. The nickname had been bestowed on him so early in life -that the memory of such men and women as knew him ran not to the -contrary. Tim was Tim by immemorial custom; even his father, who had -little reverence for established usages, never thought of altering this -one, and, as one name is as good as another, we too will call him by the -only one by which he was ever known. - -Tim was a slightly-made, lean, brown child, but without the pretty -colour brown children usually have. He had such regular little features -and such a pale little face that he might almost have been called faded, -had he ever looked otherwise. Mrs. Quitchett had pronounced him to be -‘the thinnest and lightest baby ever she see,’ when he was transferred -to her care from that of the monthly nurse, in which opinion she was -supported by that lady, who might be said to be an authority on such -matters. Possibly she too might throw some light on the question of how -he came by that pre-baptismal nickname of his, for she alone had had -much to do with him previous to the day when he had been carried, a poor -little skinny Christian-elect, to be received into the pale of the -Church. - -That event was seven years into the past at the time I write of, and -Tim, despite his puny appearance, having struggled through the usual -maladies of childhood, and cut several of his second teeth, was living -in an old house in one of the western counties of England. - -The Stoke Ashton manor-house, of which the most modern rooms dated from -the days of Elizabeth, had been the home of the Darley family through -ages of unbroken descent, until a part of it having been destroyed by -fire in the year of our Lord 1780, the then existing Darley had built -the big house up in the park, and called it Darley Court. Thenceforward -for the next seventy years or so, what was left of the manor-house -became the abode of widowed mothers, spinster sisters, or married sons, -until the day when, no such relative laying claim to it at the moment, -old Squire Darley let it to Tim’s parents. - -The first seven years of the child’s life in the queer old house could -not well have been less eventful. He was happy enough in the company of -Mrs. Quitchett and his old setter Bess, partly perhaps from never having -known any other. - -‘His father,’ nurse told him, ‘was in India.’ - -‘Where was that?’ asked Tim. - -‘Oh! a long way off.’ - -‘Farther than Granthurst?’ - -‘Yes, much farther.’ - -The schoolmaster, who came and gave him a lesson now and then, showed -him India on the map, but he was not much the wiser. His mother, Mrs. -Quitchett never mentioned, and as she never introduced the subject, he -asked no questions, having the habit of deferring to her in all matters, -and her rule, though absolute, was not a hard one. There was only one -point on which he ever questioned her authority: in his determination on -no account to wear a hat, he was adamant. We all have our -idiosyncrasies, and this was Tim’s. On Sundays alone could he be -prevailed upon to allow a small round covering of mixed straw to be -stuck on the extreme back of his head, when Mrs. Quitchett took him to -church in his best clothes. At first, when he was very little, his -picture-book used to be taken with him; but when he was considered to -have reached an age at which the rector’s discourses would be of service -to him, this indulgence was withdrawn, and he found thenceforward his -principal entertainment in the painted window just opposite his seat. It -had been put up in memory of some dead child, and the subject had a -great fascination for Tim, who used to call it ‘his’ window. It -represented a long stretch of quiet upland, arched by a twilight sky -paling into a streak of soft light where it disappeared on the distant -horizon; walking across the green came the tender gracious figure of the -good shepherd bearing a lamb in his loving arms. Tim knew just such a -bit of down where the lambs played, and could almost fancy sometimes -that he saw the figure coming towards him from out of the sunset. The -whole picture was subdued in colouring, and set for sharp contrast in a -frame of tall lilies and jubilant goldenhaired angels. Not less bright -was the head of the Squire’s little grandson, who sometimes knelt in the -big Court pew hard by, where, almost hidden from the rest of the church, -old Mr. Darley persisted in attending worship, to the scandal of his -daughter Miss Kate, who inclined to High Church, and to whom tall family -pews which turned their backs on the altar were an abomination. - -Thus once a week did Tim conform to laws social and religious, but the -other six days saw him scudding bareheaded over the fields, searching -for flowers along the hedgerows, or, tired at last with his wanderings, -sitting by the side of some little brook nursing his knees, and singing -low to himself little quaint snatches of song culled here and there from -old books, and set to the nursery tunes Mrs. Quitchett hummed to him, or -to others picked up, Heaven knows where,--perhaps from the birds. - -No place came amiss to Tim as a restingplace except a chair; he would -sit on the soft green grass, in a tree, on a stile, a table, a -window-sill,--anywhere but on those articles of furniture which custom -has set aside for the purpose. In the winter he and Bess curled -themselves up in the shaggy bearskin rug before the fire and fell -asleep; in the summer he sat in the patches of sun on the carpet, and -told Bess stories from the _Arabian Nights_, of which he had discovered -a copy with pictures in the old library. The fairy Pari-banou unlocked -the wonders of her palace for that patient hound; Prince Firouz Shah -flew by on the enchanted horse, Morgiana whirled in her dance, and -Gulnaré rose from the sea to be the bride of the Persian king; only the -story of the lady who whipped the little dogs Tim never related, out of -consideration for his companion’s feelings. - -Such was Tim’s life: reading to a dog, singing to the streams, having -fellowship with birds and flowers, in a strange world of his own -creation, hatless, lean, brown, and happy. The hours slipped softly by -him without his noting their passing. He knew when it was Sunday, was -glad when it was fine, not sorry when it rained, full of strange dreams -and fancies, companionless yet not alone, for nature was with him. And -so Tim grew to be eight years old. - -One day the postman brought Mrs. Quitchett a letter which had come all -the way from India,--and a long way it was in those days when no Suez -Canal existed to shorten the journey. The letter had no beginning, -because Tim’s father, who had written it, was a man who never quite knew -how to begin his letters to an old nurse. To say ‘Dear Mrs. Quitchett’ -seemed to imply undue familiarity. ‘Madam’ was altogether out of the -question. ‘Mrs. Quitchett’ sounded harsh and dictatorial, which he had -no wish to be, and to write a long letter in the third person would have -been a needless exertion. So the letter came to the point at once, -without preliminary compliment. - -‘You will perhaps be surprised to hear,’ it said, in neat upstrokes and -downstrokes and beautifully straight lines, ‘that I intend coming home -for good. My doctor strongly advises my leaving India, and I am the more -inclined to consent that I am very desirous of seeing my son, to whom I -am of opinion that the personal care of a father may be of more service -during such time as I am spared to him, than a somewhat larger fortune -at my death.’ - -Nurse Quitchett glanced over her venerable spectacles at Tim, who was -lying asleep on the window-seat, with his arm round the neck of the -faithful Bess, but returned without making any remark to her reading. - -‘You will have the goodness to acquaint my son with my change of plans. -I shall probably reach home by about October, and shall hope to find my -boy ready to give me a welcome. I am afraid his education must have been -rather neglected, but he is young yet, and that deficiency may easily -be supplied; while I am sure that in your hands his health at least must -have been well looked after. I have always disapproved of the -selfishness of some Indian parents who, keeping their children with them -in an unhealthy climate for their own gratification, injure their health -perhaps for life. I hope to be repaid for my six years’ separation from -my only child by finding a true, sturdy little pink-and-white Briton -waiting to greet me on my return. With my best thanks for your care of -the boy and the regular reports you have sent me of him, believe me, -truly yours, - - ‘WILLIAM EBBESLEY.’ - - * * * * * - -Mrs. Quitchett put down the letter, took off her glasses, which were -somehow quite wet, and looked again, not without apprehension, at the -sleeping boy. In vain she tried to make any of the epithets used in the -letter fit the child before her: he was as unlike the picture of the -true, sturdy little pink-and-white Briton, on which his father’s fancy -dwelt so fondly, as one boy could be unlike another. - -William Ebbesley, observing that Anglo-Indian babies were as a rule -small and sallow, had concluded, with defective logic, that his child, -not being brought up in India, would be neither the one nor the other. -He had thought of this imaginary child of his, until, Prometheus-like, -he had given life to the figure he had himself created; and had any one -cared to inquire what the boy was like, would unhesitatingly have -described him. Nowadays his illusions would be rudely dispelled by -photography; but when Tim was a child, the art was also in its infancy, -and it had not become the fashion to have babies photographed once a -year. On one occasion, when Tim was three years old, Mrs. Quitchett had -set up his hair in a sort of crest and carried him to a neighbouring -town to be photographed, but the child could not be got to sit still, -and ended by a flood of tears, so that the little card which finally -went to Mr. Ebbesley was hardly satisfactory as a likeness. Mrs. -Quitchett herself confessed as much, and the father was quite indignant -at this libel on his child. It never even occurred to him that the -photograph, bad as it was, had at least been taken from the real boy, -and as such might be nearer the truth than the portrait his fancy had -painted. - -Writing not being a strong point of Mrs. Quitchett’s, her epistolary -style was remarkable chiefly for its terseness, and she would as soon -have thought of writing a novel at once as of launching into any -description of Tim’s appearance, beyond such casual expressions of -admiration as nurses use of their bantlings, and which are not meant to -be taken literally. - -After a while Tim stirred uneasily, and Bess, roused into -semi-consciousness by his change of position, put up her cold nose and -touched his cheek. The boy woke with a start and sat up, to find the -eyes of his old nurse fixed on him with an expression he had never seen -in them before; it was gone as soon as she saw that he was awake, but -not before he had remarked it, and springing quickly to her he asked, -‘Why do you look at me like that? What have you got there?’ - -The second question happily furnishing nurse with an excuse for evading -the first, which she would have been puzzled how to answer, ‘It’s a -letter from your papa,’ she said, ‘and I’ve got a surprise for you; what -do you think is going to happen?’ - -‘He’s coming home,’ replied Tim quietly, as if he had known it all -along. - -‘Law bless the boy!’ called out Mrs. Quitchett. ‘Whoever could have told -you? But there! nobody could, for I’ve just this minute finished reading -the letter, and it’s not been out of my hand.’ - -Tim nodded sagaciously: ‘I dreamed it,’ he said, as he walked off into -the garden, leaving his nurse in that condition which she would herself -have described as a capability of being knocked down with a feather. - -‘Well, of all the out-of-the-way odd children ever I see!’ she -ejaculated under her breath; and then the father’s picture of the little -Briton recurred to her so pathetically comic in its contrast to facts, -that she could not help smiling, though the tears followed close after, -as she thought, ‘He’ll come between me and my boy; well, I ought to ha’ -known how it would be.’ - -But though the old nurse might shed a few tears in private, and to Tim -the words ‘My father is coming’ conveyed, it is true, some misty sense -of approaching change, the letter and its contents left no perceptible -mark on the inhabitants of the manor-house. Mrs. Quitchett could not -spare much time to speculation, and her charge had not contracted the -habit of looking ahead; what difference his father’s home-coming would -make in his life he knew not, and scarcely cared to imagine. - -The summer passed away in no respect unlike those other five or six he -could remember. The roses bloomed and paled and fell; the birds built -their nests, laid their eggs, hatched and reared their young, all in due -order; the cornfields passed through all their accustomed phases; July -succeeded to June, August to July, September to August, and ‘Nature the -dear old nurse’ led this youngest of her nurslings through the peaceful -hot months, unsuspicious of those that were to follow. - -The first touch of autumn saddened our Tim; the waving fields of golden -grain, with their wind-rippled orange shadows, had lent a thrill of -happiness to a little soul alive to all such influences, and now that -the meek, stately ears had bowed their heads to the sickle, he missed -their presence, and sorrowed over the stubble. - -This month, too, the guns were popping all over the country-side, and -Tim hated guns for two reasons--first, because they startled the quiet -of his usual rambles, giving a sense of insecurity even to the quietest -fields; and secondly, because each report that made the child jump and -tremble, meant the death or wounding of a bird; and that was keen grief -to him. - - - - -CHAPTER II - - ... and the sweet smell of the fields - Past, and the sunshine came along with him. - - TENNYSON’S _Pelleas and Ettarre_. - - -One day a party of gentlemen set out from Darley Court to shoot -partridges. Old Squire Darley was an open-handed man, and loved his kind -well enough to be glad to fill his house with them two or three times a -year; but better than all else in the world did he love his grandson -Carol, and Carol was worth loving. A brighter, truer, more boyish boy -than Carol Darley did not exist in all England; he was straight as a -little dart, had never had a day’s illness in his life, and was blessed, -in addition to an excellent temper and tearing spirits, with a frame -slight as yet, but well knit and vigorous, a broad frank face, a joyous -mouth, a bright colour, a shock of golden curls, and two such honest -kindly blue eyes, that you might draw gladness from them like water from -a well. And the old man would have loved him had he come to him with -none of these claims for affection, for was he not the point in which -all his hopes and cares centred, the sole survivor of his house, the -child of his dead son? The child had come to the two old people like a -message straight from heaven, in their heaviest grief. The first -reawakening to life after their crushing loss was the discovery that the -little lips had been taught to call the old place ‘home.’ - -Carol was thirteen on this particular morning, and to-day, in fulfilment -of a promise of long standing, his grandfather had promoted him from -trotting about after the shooters, as he had hitherto done, to carrying -a gun of his own. Earth seemed to have nothing more to offer as he -strutted along in the clear September sunshine, bravely brushing last -night’s raindrops from the heavy turnip-tops with his sturdy legs; -already he foresaw himself the best shot in the county, as his father -had been before him. To be sure, he had not shot anything as yet, and -the little gun kicked rather and hurt his shoulder, but such trifles as -these were powerless to dash his joy; only he did hope he should shoot -something before he had to go home. - -‘That’s a fine boy of yours, Darley,’ said one of the gentlemen; ‘he -steps out well. Shall you send him into the army?’ - -The Squire swelled with honest pride as his eye fell on the boy. ‘Well, -I hardly know yet,’ he answered; ‘it seems a good soldier wasted, and -yet I have always set my heart on his making a figure in the -county--going into Parliament, and all that; it wouldn’t be the first -time a member had come from Darley. I used to hope his father--but -there, we never know what is best for us,’ added the old man hastily. -Mr. Darley felt quite sorry that he could not bestow Carol on all the -careers open to him; he was so eminently qualified to adorn whichever -might finally be selected for honour, that it was difficult to make a -wise choice. The army was a gentlemanly calling, but Mrs. Darley would -not hear of that for a moment. ‘Suppose there should be a war,’ she -said. Sometimes the Squire had leanings towards the Woolsack, or if Miss -Kate suggested the Church, he had visions of Carol in lawn sleeves -crowning sovereigns and christening royal infants; but on the whole, -though with a sense that he was defrauding all the professions, he felt -that the important post of Squire of Darley was the one for which his -treasure was pre-eminently fitted; and there at least I think he was -right. The object of all this anxious thought was not as yet gone to -Eton, which was to be the next step on his road to greatness, where he -would wear a round jacket, and perhaps be whipped; but if the road we -look along be straight, the eye does not accurately measure the -distance. - -The party of shooters were walking along a turnip-field bordered on one -side by a hazel coppice, when the dogs put up a covey of six birds a -little in front of them. Two got away, two fell, and the remaining two -flew for the coppice, on the side on which Carol was walking. - -‘Now then, sir,’ cried his grandfather, ‘the birds are waiting for you; -winged, by Jove! no, missed. You little goose! Bless my soul, what was -that?’ - -‘That’ was a sort of cry which proceeded from the coppice into which -most of Carol’s charge had gone, and quite unlike any note of partridge -or other bird. The boy’s bright colour faded from his cheeks, and he put -down his gun as though by impulse, but could not move; he stood -wide-eyed, staring at the tangle of slender hazel rods from which the -sound had come. Some of the party, however, knowing that these accidents -were not of a fatal kind, parted the branches and disclosed to view a -small figure habited in an old holland blouse, stretched among the -sticks and dry leaves which strewed the ground. The child lay quite -still, and on nearer approach proved to have fainted. Carol now came -near, steadying himself by his grandfather’s kind hand. - -‘Is he dead?’ he asked in a whisper, all the horror of having killed his -fellow-boy surging over his bright young heart like a drowning wave. - -‘Dead! no, no, no,’ answered the Colonel good-naturedly (he who had -asked whether Carol was to be put into the army); ‘he’s been grazed, -nothing more. It’s the fright that made the poor child faint; any doctor -will pick out the shot in five minutes, and to-morrow he’ll be trotting -about again.’ - -Carol said nothing, but big tears of thankfulness swelled up in his -bonnie blue eyes, and the Squire felt the boy’s grasp tighten in his. He -had to turn away himself (tears are so infectious), and to adopt a -jovially bustling manner, as he asked the keeper if he knew whose child -this was. - -‘If you please, sir,’ said the man, ‘it’s the little gentleman as lives -in the old manor-house along of the old lady.’ - -‘Dear, dear--dear, dear! take him home, some one; I will send down this -evening and inquire. Anything that is wanted, if they will only let us -know, we will be too happy; remember to say that; be sure you say we -shall be so glad to send anything.’ - -Here a grateful pressure from the little hand in his caused him to look -at his grandson. The boy was still white, and the old man took alarm at -once. ‘Why, Carol--boy, come home, come home; it’s nothing, sir; didn’t -you hear what the Colonel said? All right to-morrow,’ and he departed, -dragging his unwilling grandson after him, unheeding his entreaties to -be allowed to accompany those of the party who undertook, guided by the -keeper, to convey our wounded hero to the experienced care of Mrs. -Quitchett, for whom, now that he was come to himself, he had begun in a -feeble way to ask. - -That lady considered it due to herself to betray no emotion in the -presence of ‘the gentlemen’ further than a violent pull at a wandering -string of her cap, which caused that erection to assume a sidelong -position, and imparted to her a certain wildness of appearance, -strangely at variance with the studied impassiveness of her bearing. - -There was something distrustful, even defiant, in her manner, thinly -disguised under an assumption of extreme deference, as she ‘thanked them -for the trouble they had been at, and sent her duty to Mr. Darley; but -they had all that they wanted, she thanked him.’ Then, when she had -bowed them out, paying but scant attention to expressions of interest -and concern, she bundled off the garden-boy post-haste for the doctor, -and undressed her charge and got him to bed with wonderful celerity. - -When the doctor came he made light of her anxiety, assuring her the boy -was hardly scratched, picked out the shot, at which Tim winced, and -departed, promising to look in in the morning. - -After the tumult comes peace, and in the course of the long, drowsy -afternoon, when his kind nurse brought her work to sit by him, Tim -narrated the events of the morning in his own fashion. - -‘You know I hate the guns,’ he began, ‘and I’d gone up by the hazel -coppice above Beech Farm, because I thought I should be out of the way -of them, and I was sitting in there; it’s one of my houses, you -know,--in the dining-room I was. We were having dinner--make-believe -dinner, you know--I and the squirrel--only I had to make-believe the -squirrel too, because he wouldn’t come near enough--I suppose he thought -I should hurt him, but he needn’t have thought that, need he? Well, just -then I heard voices in the field outside, and there were the dogs quite -close. I stayed quiet, for I thought they would go by; but there came a -sound of wings, and quick, one after the other, two shots--bang, bang, -and I jumped up to run; but there were shouts, and then another shot, -and I felt I was hit, and fell down, for I thought I was killed; and I -don’t remember much more till I got back here.’ - -So far all was coherent enough, a rare virtue in Tim’s account of -events, in which, as a rule, his fancy made such havoc of mere prose -facts, that it was hard to distinguish what he only thought had happened -from what had actually taken place. But after a minute or two of silence -he added-- - -‘And, nurse, do you know, I think there was an angel there.’ - -‘Lor’ bless the child!’ thought Mrs. Quitchett; ‘now he’s off, I -suppose.’ - -‘It was in the part I don’t much remember,’ Tim went on; ‘it was only -the face. I didn’t notice it at the time, but I can remember it now -quite plain. It had golden hair, where the sun shone on it, like the -angels in my window in church, and big blue eyes. I remember it now, -though I did not notice it then, which is odd, nurse, isn’t it?’ - -‘There, there,’ said Mrs. Quitchett hastily, ‘that’ll do; you’ve talked -as much as is good for you, and more too; maybe you did see one. Now you -just lie quiet and go to sleep.’ And Tim obeyed and went to sleep; and -in the evening when the groom from the Court came ‘to enquire,’ a most -satisfactory account of his condition was returned to the Darleys, which -comforted Carol not a little. - -That youth, as a gentleman who went out shooting and dined late, -considered himself as formed, and spoke of the infantile brown holland -Tim as ‘poor child’ with lofty compassion. Now that all was going well, -he forgot his fright, and bragged quite grandly about the day’s sport to -the lady next him at dinner. ‘Thirty brace and a few rabbits to six -guns; not a bad bag, was it, for a half day?’ - -‘And how much of it did _you_ shoot?’ asked his neighbour tartly, who -was too young herself to tolerate the boy’s youthful boasting; damsels -of eighteen do not like a spoilt boy about the house. Carol blushed a -fine pink, and then burst out laughing at his own discomfiture. - -‘Don’t you know,’ said his friend the Colonel, who sat on the other side -of Miss, ‘that you must never ask a man that question? You ask what the -bag was, and politely take it for granted that each of us contributed -his fair share. Our friend there, who, with the modesty of all truly -great men, blushes at the record of his own deeds, can’t tell you in my -presence how he had to cover my deficiencies; besides,’ he added, with a -knowing look at poor Carol, which deepened the glow on the lad’s face, -‘bringing down a very remarkable head of large game, the like of which, -I will undertake to say, is not in any bag in the county.’ - -Carol, you may be sure, sat over his wine with the other gentlemen, -feeling that that was due to himself, though his thoughts wandered -continually to some mysterious telegraphic tackle in one of the trees on -the lawn, the condition of which he was burning to inspect, while he -busied himself with collecting various provisions from the dishes -nearest to him, to be conveyed, by and by, to a squirrel, his prisoner -and dependant. The Squire always liked to have the boy near himself, and -used to say, ‘We are all the better, I take it, for having to be a -little careful what we say.’ The conversation did not interest the lad -for the most part, being mainly political (for Mr. Darley was a keen -politician); but presently his attention was attracted by hearing the -Colonel talking of the event of the morning. - -‘That was a strange little mortal that got hurt to-day,’ he was saying. -To which the Squire, who was a little deaf, answered promptly, ‘Ah! -thank you; the groom came back just before dinner. The doctor says it -was nothing. Going on as well as possible, thank God; but it might have -been a nasty thing.’ - -‘I am glad he’s all right, poor child. Whose child, by the way, did you -say he was? Surely not the old cat’s in the Egyptian headgear.’ - -‘Ah! ’pon my life, it’s a sad story. I remember their first coming down -here, nine or ten years ago it must be. They took the old -manor-house,--it should have been my poor dear Harry’s, but his wife -couldn’t bear the place; but there, she’s gone, poor woman, and it’s all -over now. What was I saying? Ah! the little boy. Yes. Ebbesley their -name was. He must have been going on for forty; looked older, a good -deal older, than his wife; a very handsome woman I recollect. He had -made money in India; men get on young there--bar, civil service, I don’t -know what. He’s gone back there now; been there ever since, ...’ and -here the old gentleman, observing Master Carol’s blue eyes very big and -fixed on him, mumbled something to his friend that had Latin words in -it; Carol heard _debetur pueris_, but did not know what they meant. - -‘And the child you saw to-day was their son,’ the Squire went on; ‘he -was born soon after they came here.’ - -‘And does he live there all by himself, with that old woman?’ - -‘I believe he must. The old woman must be his nurse; I never thought of -him much till to-day. Lord knows how he’s got educated, or if he ever -has. He must have had a dull childhood; perhaps I ought to have seen -after him, but we were never over intimate with the parents. My wife -didn’t take to Mrs. Ebbesley from the first: you see our Kate was a -young girl then, and we had to be careful for her, you know. But the -poor little boy must be very lonely. Will you have some more wine? No? -Then we’ll have our coffee with the ladies.’ - -‘My dear,’ said Mrs. Darley to her husband, as he came in last of the -black coats from the dining-room, ‘didn’t you say that Carol turned -quite white when he heard that little boy scream?’ - -‘As white as your cap, ma’am.’ - -‘There,’ said Mrs. Darley triumphantly to her daughter, ‘and the doctor -has told me so often that after a sudden shock any one ought always to -take a little dose.’ - -Miss Kate, a kind-hearted but stern lady of two-and-thirty, who loved -her nephew dearly, but was forced to act as a sort of permanent drag on -her parents’ exuberant affection, protested vainly that the boy looked -as well as she had ever seen him. When he went to bed his grandmother -drew him mysteriously into her dressing-room, and presented him with a -small round globule, and directions for use. She would have been less -pleased, I fear, with his improved appearance next morning had she seen -him, on reaching his apartment, pound the medicine up fine, and -cautiously scatter the dust out of the window, where, we will hope, -some dyspeptic sparrow was benefited by it, for no one else ever was. It -is a sad fact that a great part of the contents of the good old lady’s -medicine-chest was disposed of in this fashion. - -At Carol’s age, however, a good night will repair most nervous shocks -without artificial aids, and he was up early next morning, and down in -the garden as soon as breakfast was over. The art of coaxing was an open -book to Carol, and he attacked the old Scotch gardener,--with whom, as -with every one else, he was a prime favourite,--in his most fascinating -manner. After much judiciously administered sympathy for his friend’s -pet grievances, ‘Please, I want a bunch of grapes,’ he said presently. - -‘I mayna let ye have the greeps, Masterrr Carrel.’ - -‘Oh but, M‘Allan, they’re not for me; they are for some one who is ill. -I must really have a bunch, please. I’m sure grandpapa wouldn’t -mind,--and some leaves, please, to put in this basket.’ - -Of course he had his way in the end, and set off with his booty in the -direction of the manor-house, as hard as his legs would carry him. Mrs. -Quitchett saw him coming as she stood in the doorway, shading her -spectacles with her hand, looking out for the doctor. Did she forecast -in her mind some part of what should follow on this visit? She was -certainly far from guessing the whole of it. - -Tim had passed a rather restless night, full of short broken dreams, in -all of which, the ‘angel’ of his adventure had played a prominent part. -Now that he was up and dressed, he still felt tired, and was lying on -his favourite window-seat looking out at the already changing trees. He -heard the door open but did not turn his head, till a strange voice, -young and clear, quite unlike the doctor’s, which he had expected, said, -with a pretty hesitation, ‘I have brought you some grapes; I hope you -are all right this morning; I ...’ and there stopped, for Tim had -started up and was sitting staring, with his heart in his eyes. There -within a few feet of him was the face he had seen in his dreams, the -face of his ‘angel.’ It seemed quite natural to him to hold out his -arms; God had sent his angel to comfort him. Carol was not fond of -kissing, and had all a boy’s horror of being seen to perform that -operation, but he could not resist the mute appeal of those outstretched -arms, though he did not know what prompted it. He went forward half -frank and half embarrassed, and stooping down, kissed Tim’s poor little -pale face. Then Mrs. Quitchett said, ‘Here’s young Master Darley has -brought you some grapes,’ and Tim bounced back to earth out of his -dreamland, and was taken very shy, scarce finding words to say ‘Thank -you.’ - - - - -CHAPTER III - - ... for Enoch seem’d to them - Uncertain as a vision or a dream, - Faint as a figure seen in early dawn - Down at the far end of an avenue, - Going we know not where.... - - TENNYSON’S _Enoch Arden_. - - -Carol did not stay long, but promised to come soon again, which left Tim -in a quiver of excitement, and thinking him the kindest, the handsomest, -the most brilliant person he had ever seen. It is odd that these two -boys should have lived so near one another so long without becoming -acquainted; but it must be remembered that Tim’s life had been one of -cloistral seclusion. If he had been dimly conscious at times that people -spoke of the Squire’s grandson, he had paid as little attention to that -as to other things that they said. Since Darley had been his home, Carol -had been much away at school, and in his holidays, had noticed Tim, if -he saw him, as he noticed any other child about the village, without -attaching any particular identity to him, for it is fair to acknowledge -that there was nothing remarkable in Tim’s appearance shrinking into the -hedge with his burden of wildflowers, as the other boy flashed by on his -pony. But now that the child was weak and ill, and, above all, reduced -to that condition by an act of his, all Carol’s generous young soul was -stirred in his behalf; and the bunch of grapes was the first result of -this blind instinct of obligation to protect and cherish the innocent -victim of his bow and spear. You may fancy if the old people at the -Court rejoiced over this touching and beautiful action of their darling -when they came to hear of it. - -‘What a dear good boy that is, upon my soul!’ said the Squire, squeezing -his old wife’s hand; and she, with a tear in her eye, answered, ‘We’ve -great cause to be thankful, Hugh! The Lord has taken away, but He’s -given again; it’s like having Harry back.’ And they shook their kind old -heads, recalling other instances of singular goodness in Carol, and -traits of likeness to his father. Harry had given his sixpence to the -blind beggar, and Carol had saved up his pennies to buy a crutch for the -lame boy at the shoemaker’s. Once the Squire had met his grandson -assisting a certain crone, of great age and most forbidding aspect, to -carry a load of faggots she had been collecting in the Court woods for -her wretched little fire. This goody was, I regret to say, a most -abandoned old woman, and a sworn enemy of Mrs. Darley; refusing -point-blank to attend church, and strongly suspected of foxlike visits -to the good lady’s hen-roost. Moreover, the Squire was very particular -about the sanctity of the timber in his woods. But on this occasion he -not only pardoned the trespasser, but gave her permission to boil her -skinny pot over his sticks for the future; until some fresh outrage on -her part put her once more without the pale of society. So the objects -of Carol’s kindness shone with a borrowed light, and were dear to his -relatives as so many proofs of the extraordinary amiability of the lad’s -disposition. - -Tim became an object of great interest to the Darleys: Miss Kate came to -see him, and Mrs. Darley, bringing jelly and other good things, such as -soft fussy old ladies love to take to sick folk. And the Squire came -himself, saying that ‘Upon his word, Tim was a very nice little fellow, -and when he got better must come to see them at the Court,’ a prospect -that alarmed him not a little. And they had plenty of chances of -visiting the child, for Tim was ill longer than could have been -expected. One day, when the doctor had seen him, he stopped as he left -the house and said to Mrs. Quitchett, ‘You must take care of this little -man, nurse; he is by temperament an excitable child. So slight a -scratch as he got would have had no effect on most boys, but the shock -has evidently told on him; he is a little feverish and must be kept -quiet.’ - -Then he paused a little, pulling at the clematis round the porch, as -though weighing the desirability of saying more, decided to do so, and -added with just a shade more impressiveness in his voice-- - -‘Things will affect him more than other people all his life; what would -be nothing to an ordinary person might kill him.’ - -Mrs. Quitchett sat down on a seat near, rather hastily, and looked hard -out, up the path. - -‘You don’t mean to say he’s in any danger?’ she said. - -‘Danger, dear, dear, no! Don’t run away with any notion of that sort. -The child has a skin scratch that is half healed already; that’s all. I -only mean that, considering how very slightly he’s hurt, it’s odd he -isn’t running about again as well as ever. The boy must have an odd -constitution.’ - -‘He was never remarkably strong,’ Mrs. Quitchett answered, with a touch -of irony; ‘the wonder was that we reared him. Such a baby as he was! you -didn’t know if you had him in your arms or not. But she was a good -nurser, though I verily believe she’d have had a wet-nurse if I hadn’t -shamed her out of it. She said the babe was a drag on her; she didn’t -let him stay so long, poor lamb. He owes what health he’s got to you and -me, sir, under Providence, though I say it that should not.’ Mrs. -Quitchett was not a great talker as a rule, certainly no gossip, and -probably to no one but so old a friend as the doctor would she have -touched on the subject of Mrs. Ebbesley’s shortcomings. - -‘Well, nurse,’ said the doctor cheerfully, ‘still under Providence, -we’ll have him healthier yet before we’ve done with him; depend on it, -he’ll bury many stronger people.’ - -But Mrs. Quitchett laid by the doctor’s words in her heart. ‘What would -be nothing to an ordinary person might kill him.’ The sentence made a -place for itself deep in her memory, to be recalled only too well years -after it was spoken. She had a great regard for the doctor,--he was one -of the few people whose opinion she respected,--and she whispered to -herself as she got Tim’s tea ready, ‘He tried to smooth it away, but -it’s better to face things. He means what he says, for he’s a man of -sense, which is more than most.’ Some relic of her anxiety must have -lingered in her face when she carried in the little tray, for Tim said, -‘Why, nurse, how grave you look; what’s doctor been telling you?’ but -broke off to add, ‘Please, I want you to let _him_ stay to tea with me; -may he?’ ‘Him’ was Carol, who was there again, to inquire after Tim’s -progress, and whom that youth was still very shy of mentioning by name. -Carol came nearly every day now, and his visits did more for Tim than -either the doctor’s medicine or Mrs. Darley’s jelly. - -‘Master Darley can have his tea with you and welcome, if he thinks his -grandmamma would not object,’ said Mrs. Quitchett, glad, as on a former -occasion, to escape the first of Tim’s questions by answering the -second,--glad too of any chance to make the boy look so happy. - -Carol had a fine appetite and ate more than his host, in spite of the -dinner that would follow, for him, by and by. - -‘Do you never eat more than that?’ he asked in wondering pity. - -‘Oh yes, sometimes I eat a great deal, when I’ve been running about,’ -answered Tim. - -‘He makes a hearty tea mostly,’ added Mrs. Quitchett, ‘though he never -was much of a boy for his dinner.’ Tim sighed; he began to fear he was -not ‘much of a boy’ for anything. He had never thought about himself -before, but Carol seemed to present a standard by which to measure -creation, and he felt for his part that he fell far short of the desired -point. Carol’s next question was not calculated to reassure him; it was -one boys always ask, and grown-up men too sometimes, and is of all -others the most difficult to answer-- - -‘What do you do with yourself all day?’ - -Now Tim’s days were always well filled, but on a sudden it seemed to him -that none of his pursuits were worthy of mention, so he said the best -thing he could under the circumstances-- - -‘I don’t know; I never thought; sometimes I do one thing, sometimes -another.’ - -‘Do you read much? Ain’t you dull all by yourself?’ - -‘Oh no, I’m never dull. I like reading; not geography and that sort of -thing; I hate that, but fairy-tales. Do you read the _Arabian Nights_?’ - -‘Yes, I’ve read some. I like Aladdin: what a clever chap he was. What -else do you do?’ - -‘Oh! I get flowers, and I find out new walks, and make-believe seeking -adventures, and I tell stories to Bess,’ says Tim, grown bolder. - -‘What, the dog? What a rum idea!’ - -Tim felt he had said something foolish. ‘Do you care for flowers?’ he -said hastily. - -‘Yes, I’m very fond of them; Aunt Kate is teaching me botany.’ - -‘I don’t know what that is,’ says downright Tim, ‘but I’m glad you like -flowers. I was afraid you wouldn’t care for them; that you’d think it -was childish or something.’ - -‘Not I. I bet I could beat you at the names of wildflowers; but I like -birds better. Our keeper knows birds by their flight, and I do some of -’em now. I’ve got a cabinet of eggs. I’ll show you when you come and see -me.’ Tim was grateful and interested. - -‘Oh! and I tell you what--you shall help me with my telegraph; I’ve got -a telegraph from one tree to another, made with string and a basket; but -it’s no fun sending messages to oneself, and Aunt Kate’s no good at -climbing trees.’ - -‘I’m afraid I shouldn’t be much.’ - -‘Oh yes you will; I’ll show you how, and you shall have the easy tree. -I’m afraid it’s too far, or we’d have a telegraph from our house to -this, but I should never get enough string.’ And so the talk would go -on, with, ‘Oh! do you do that? so do I,’ and ‘Oh! that’s just what I -always think,’--delightful discoveries of unexpected sympathies, in -spite of great unlikeness in most things, and innocent remarks on Tim’s -part, which made Carol shout with laughter, and then stop and explain -very kindly and carefully why he was amused, as he saw the pained look -spring into his friend’s face at his mirth. - -‘Do you play games?’ he asked once. - -‘I don’t care much for games,’ Tim answered innocently, ‘but I play -draughts sometimes of an evening with Mrs. Quitchett.’ - -‘Oh! I didn’t mean _that_ sort of game,’ said Carol; ‘I meant cricket -and that sort of thing; the kind of games we play at school.’ - -‘No,’ Tim owned reluctantly; ‘you see I’ve had no one to play with, but -I should like to learn, if you’ll teach me.’ - -‘Oh yes, I’ll teach you; of course you couldn’t have learnt with no one -to play with. Mrs. Quitchett doesn’t look as if she’d be much good at -bowling,’ and then both boys laughed. - -‘By the way,’ Carol asked, after a little, ‘how comes it that you and -she live here all alone? She’s no relation of yours, is she?’ - -‘No, she’s my nurse,--was, you know, of course I mean.’ Tim was -beginning to be dimly conscious that as Carol had no nurse, it was not -the right thing. ‘But,’ he added with compunction at disowning dear Mrs. -Quitchett, ‘I love her as if she was my mother.’ - -‘And is your mother dead?’ - -‘I don’t know; I think I never had a mother.’ - -‘Oh, you must have had one. I suppose she’s dead; mine is--my father -too’; and a sweet gravity stole over the bright young face. - -‘Poor dear,’ said Tim, forgetting in his pity for his friend that he was -himself far more alone in the world. He accepted Carol’s explanation of -the utter absence of his mother from his life, supposing him right on -all subjects. ‘She must have died when you were a baby, before you could -remember; they do sometimes,’ his instructor had said; he knew so much -more than Tim about everything. That youth believed in him firmly. -‘Carol says so,’ became a formula with which he would confront Mrs. -Quitchett herself, who smiled superior, but left him his comfortable -reliance. - -The wisdom of Solomon was nothing in Tim’s eyes to that of this radiant -being, who was not only a proficient in such unknown arts as cricket, -but actually beat him on his own ground of wildflowers and fairy-tales, -having acquired a smattering of Greek mythology endlessly astonishing -and delightful. Had any one dared to deny that Carol was the born prince -of all mankind, I don’t know what Tim would have said to him. He -counted the hours between his friend’s visits, brightened visibly when -he came into the room, seemed to lose all heart when he left it, and -watched his every motion with looks of jealous love. Carol, on his side, -grew to have quite a protecting kindness for the pale child, perhaps not -sorry to show off a little to such an appreciative audience; finding Tim -too not an unpleasant novelty and variation from the companionlessness -of the Court. - -It was getting on towards October now, but Tim had entirely forgotten -the approaching advent of his father, so completely did Carol engross -all his thoughts, until one day Carol himself was the means of recalling -it to him. - -‘Where’s your father?’ he asked, pausing in an attempt to reproduce the -features of Bess on a small lump of wax used by Mrs. Quitchett for -waxing her thread, with the aid of that lady’s best scissors. - -‘He’s in India,’ answered Tim, mechanically giving the reply always -given to him; and then remembering suddenly his father’s letter, ‘At -least,’ he added, ‘I believe he’s coming home soon. I must ask Mrs. -Quitchett when he’s coming.’ - -‘What! don’t you know? Why didn’t you tell me? Shan’t you be glad to see -him?’ persists inquisitive Carol. - -‘I don’t think I care much: don’t believe I ever did see him.’ - -‘And how do you know he’s coming?’ - -‘I forget: dreamed it, I fancy; or else Mrs. Quitchett had it in a -letter.’ - -‘That’s more likely, _I_ should think,’ said Carol, laughing; and so the -matter dropped, Mrs. Quitchett not being at hand for reference as to -date. And that was the only occasion on which Mr. Ebbesley’s name was -mentioned between the two boys. The circles widened round it in Tim’s -memory like those round a pebble in a stream till they merged by degrees -into the even flow of his new friendship. - -Mrs. Quitchett, on the contrary, who had not made a new friend these -twenty years, had wondered several times that she received no second -letter from her employer; wondered too, not without misgiving, what he -would think of the Court intimacy, but felt it was none of her doing, so -put it aside among the things to be accepted, not curable, even if -harmful, by any amount of speculation. - -One day--the 16th of September I think it was--a heavy gray day, dull -and cheerless, when out of doors felt like a stuffy room, and Mrs. -Quitchett said there was thunder in the air, Tim was restless and -uncomfortable. In vain his nurse had tried to interest him in his -accustomed pursuits. Pari-banou could do nothing for him; he had grown -tired of drawing princes and princesses with strange sausage-shaped -bodies and long elbowless arms that projected before and behind; and -still Carol did not come. The days were getting shorter now, and there -was not much of the afternoon left. - -Ah! there he comes at last. The gate swings creaking, and Carol, hot -and breathless, stirs the air in the dull house with his lusty cry of -‘Tim, where are you?’ ‘Yes, he knows he is late; he’s very sorry, but he -had much to do; has been, among other things, to get some blackberries, -and has brought them to Tim,’--not quite all, perhaps, to judge from -certain stains on the fair face, unless he picked them with his -teeth, but still a goodly show of squashy purple berries in a -pocket-handkerchief;--Tim must have them for his tea; yes, that will be -delightful, and Carol will stop and help eat them. - -‘I’ve been out in the garden to-day,’ Tim says; ‘the Virginia creeper is -quite red in some places, and there is hardly a rose left.’ - -‘The time’s getting on, and that reminds me I had something to ask you: -will you take care of my squirrel for me when I go away? He doesn’t want -much looking after,--only nuts, and to have the hay changed for his bed -once in three days. Hulloa! don’t you feel well? shall I call Mrs. -Quitchett?’ - -‘No, no, I’m all right; but what did you say? are you going away?’ - -‘Oh, is that all? I thought you knew it; I must have told you; every one -else knows it: I’m going to Eton next week; didn’t I tell you?’ - -‘No--you--didn’t--tell--me,’ poor Tim answered very slowly. ‘You talked -about school, but--but--I don’t know--I didn’t think; I thought you’d -always come and see me.’ - -‘Oh! never mind, you know,’ Carol said, rather disturbed at this -unexpected effect of his announcement; ‘you’ll get on all right; and -then I shall write, and the holidays ’ll come in no time, and all that.’ - -The consolation was vague, but effectual. After all, the separation -would not be eternal, and there would be the squirrel. Would Tim take -care of him? wouldn’t he? How that squirrel got over-fed when he came to -live at the manor-house! - -Once started on the subject of going to Eton, Carol had much to tell, -and Tim was a wonderful listener. This was Carol’s first promotion from -the ranks of a private school, second only in importance to that of -having a gun. The topic lasted through tea, and was still engrossing -them when they were startled by the sound of wheels, which stopped at -the gate. - -‘What can it be?’ said Tim; ‘the doctor’s not coming to-day.’ Tim was -lying on the sofa, and Carol sitting beside him. They heard some -unwonted commotion in the hall, and Mrs. Quitchett’s voice in accents of -keenest surprise. - -Carol jumped up and was for going to see what had happened; but he had -not long to wait, for the next moment the door opened, and he found -himself struggling fiercely in the arms of a tall yellow-faced -gentleman, with grizzled hair and whiskers, who was straining him -passionately to his heart. - -‘Let me go; what are you doing?’ he called out, kicking frantically; -and Tim, supposing some damage was intended to his idol, set up a feeble -wail. It was at this moment that Mrs. Quitchett entered, and called -out-- - -‘Law, Mr. Ebbesley, sir, that’s young Master Darley from the Court -you’ve got hold of.’ Then pointing to the sofa, where Tim lay crying, -whiter and thinner even than usual, she added, ‘That one’s your son.’ - - - - -CHAPTER IV - - This child is not mine as the first was, - I cannot sing it to rest: - I cannot lift it up fatherly - And bless it upon my breast. - - LOWELL’S _Changeling_. - - -William Ebbesley had travelled night and day. As he neared the child -that was all he had left on earth, for whose sake he had lived loveless -for seven years of incessant work, his impatience for his reward -increased. He outstripped the post, writing letters but not lingering -for them to be received. What did it matter whether they were prepared -for him on this day or that? had not they been waiting for him for -months past? He had meant to wander through France and Italy on his way; -to visit Rome, Venice, Paris; to turn aside here and there, as fancy -led him. The thought of ease and leisure was pleasant to the weary -wayfarer on life’s highway; he, whose whole time had for years been -portioned out with the regularity and monotony of clockwork, found, or -expected to find, a luxury in caprice and idleness. But the thought of -his boy drove all others from his head. They would see Europe together, -and all wonders of nature or of art should steal a fresh charm for him, -mirrored in the delight of young eyes. His wanderings would be far more -pleasantly irregular, dictated by the wayward fancy of a bright -impulsive child, than by his own more conventional judgment. - -Mr. Ebbesley’s expectations of his son were not bounded by strict -reason: he did not reflect that the child had never even heard of most -of the countries they were to visit. His life had not favoured much -exercise of the imagination, and all he possessed of that quality had -flowed for seven years in this one direction. It was art, literature, -and all to him; and we have seen how widely the conception he had built -up for himself differed from the reality. The child of his dreams must -be tall, well-made and bright-coloured, merry and healthy, but above all -he must be full to overflowing with love to match the love he was -bringing him. He knew nothing of children, and drew his conclusions -about a child of nine from the feelings of his own heart at fifty, never -doubting that on the boy’s side the meeting had been as eagerly looked -for as on his. He had never learnt that to a child a mere name such as -‘Father’ cannot endear a person he has never seen. Those he is with, -from whom he receives kindness, however slight, may count upon his -warmest affection; but tell him he must love one brought to him for the -first time because he is akin to him, and he will not understand the -claim. - -The drive from Granthurst Station in the crawling fly had seemed -endless to the poor man. Have we not all had those drives, when we felt -how much faster we could go on foot, yet knew we could not? He had -walked up all the hills, in hopes that the wretched asthmatic old horse -would gain more energy for going down on the other side. And at last he -was here--here on the threshold of happiness, hardly daring to turn the -handle of the door. - -When he entered the room he never doubted for an instant which of the -boys before him was his son; indeed Carol, standing in the centre of the -room, was an object which so effectually caught the eye, that Tim, lying -prone upon the sofa, in the shadow of its high back, was scarcely -noticeable. He did not stop to consider that Carol was some four years -older than his son could possibly be; it was quite in accordance with -his views that the boy should be tall for his age, and in all other -respects the lad before him realised so completely the picture of his -child which for years had made itself in his heart. - -Who can blame him for the sinking he experienced as, following the -outstretched arm of the nurse, his eyes rested on the little figure of -Tim? He put down the offended Carol without a word of apology, and stood -looking at his son: he was too much taken aback to make any -demonstration. His pent-up feelings had expended themselves in the -passionate clasp of Carol to his breast. Had he found Tim alone, those -feelings must yet have found vent, and would, if they had not -counteracted his disappointment, at least have softened it: his fancy -would have been busy to make excuses to itself for the child which was, -though it was not, the original of his dream-child. But now fate had -shown him the perfect realisation of his hopes and wishes, only to pluck -it away and substitute this changeling in its place. - -As for poor Tim, he was dimly conscious that something was wrong. This -tall, gray-headed stranger, who was yet his father, frightened him; he -felt the disappointment in those sad cold eyes, though he could not -understand it. For hardly more than a minute the father and son looked -at one another, but the chill of that minute was as a barrier between -them through all their after-intercourse. - -At length, roused by some gesture or sound of Mrs. Quitchett’s to a -sense of what was required of him, William Ebbesley stooped and kissed -Tim’s forehead, and then left the room without a word. It was necessary -for him to be alone, to arrange the crowding thoughts that pressed upon -his brain, to think, to determine--above all, to be master of himself. -Half an hour afterwards, when Mrs. Quitchett went to seek him in the -room to which he had gone--a little chamber by the front door, which had -been his study in the old days--she found him sitting still in his coat -as he had come in. - -‘I came to see if you wouldn’t take something to eat, sir; I’m sorry we -were so unready for you, but if you wrote I never got it, though I -wondered not to hear from you again.’ - -He raised his head, and answered her almost mechanically, ‘Oh yes, he -would have something, no matter what--whatever was least trouble.’ She -brought him the little meal she had arranged for him, and stood watching -him as he ate in silence, with the air of one doing accustomed things in -his sleep. Her loving old heart had lent keenness to her sight, and she -had seen at a glance how things stood; she longed to smooth matters a -little, but hardly knew how to begin; she had always had some awe of her -master, which time and distance had not diminished, and at present he -seemed in no mood for conversation. Presently she took courage and -spoke. ‘You mustn’t think, sir, the little one won’t be very glad to see -you, when he finds himself a bit; the poor dear’s not himself; he had an -accident a fortnight or so back, and he’s weak and nervous yet. Your -coming was sudden to him, poor dear----’ - -He interrupted her almost angrily. ‘Who did you say that other boy was?’ - -‘’Tis young Master Darley, sir, from the Court; it was he that caused -your son’s accident while shooting, and he’s been nearly every day since -to sit with him.’ - -‘He mustn’t come any more.’ - -Mrs. Quitchett was horrified. ‘Your son ’ll fret to death without him,’ -she said; ‘he’s going away to school soon; let him come till then.’ - -She knew what had passed in her master’s mind, and did not attempt to -argue with him; only she begged for a little reprieve for her darling, -who was more precious in her eyes than all the healthiest children in -England. Mr. Ebbesley considered a little and then answered, ‘Very well; -but don’t let _me_ see him.’ And with that Mrs. Quitchett was fain to be -content. - -Tim meanwhile clung to Carol. ‘Don’t leave me,’ he said, again and -again; ‘he frightens me, that man. I don’t care if he is my father; I -want you, and only you. I don’t care about him’; and then again, -‘Promise me you won’t leave me, Carol; always be my friend.’ - -Carol promised readily enough--would have promised anything just then to -get away. He did not like emotional display, and he was very angry with -Mr. Ebbesley. ‘Was that old man mad?’ he said indignantly as he scudded -off homewards. But his wrath was not of a kind upon which the sun goes -down, and the air and exercise soon restored him to his usual spirits. A -little breeze had come up towards sunset, and blew refreshingly in his -flushed face. ‘How hot that room was!’ - -And here for a time we must part company with him. With the evening wind -in his curls, he springs out of our story, and is lost to our eyes for a -little. Two days later he went to Eton. Tim heard the Court dogcart -whirl by the house, on its way to the station. Did Carol look round? -Was that his hand waving? He could not quite tell, for his eyes were -full of childish tears. - -Soon after this Tim was about again as usual. A man had brought the -squirrel in his cage, with a message of farewell from its owner. But for -that, life seemed much the same as before. Had he dreamed all this, as -he lay on the high-backed sofa? - -At first even the presence of his father in the house made but little -difference: when they met, Tim never showed to advantage; he was -frightened, and his scared manner irritated Mr. Ebbesley, who never -guessed how much character he had. The poor man had no notion how to -talk to the child. He patted him stiffly on the head, and asked him -questions that he could not answer. He was like a man who, meeting -another in some foreign country, wishes to hold converse with him, but -does not know in what language to address him. If the boy would but -begin, he thought,--would seem in any way glad to have him there, or -claim his interest in his pursuits, he could respond, and would. He -almost wished him to be naughty; he knew he could reprove him, and that -at least would be intercourse, and might lead to something else; only -this simple shyness and silence he was powerless to attack. On one point -he had no doubt. The life his son was leading was a most unprofitable -one, and a radical change must be made in it; he called him into his -study and told him so. Tim naturally had not the least idea of what he -meant. He looked very uncomfortable, and pulled Bess’s ears. - -‘Your education,’ his father went on, ‘has been sadly neglected; if you -are ever to know what other people do, it is time you should begin to -learn something.’ - -Tim, seeing something was expected of him, whispered, ‘Yes, sir.’ - -‘Don’t call me “sir,”’ said Mr. Ebbesley shortly; ‘it sounds common. I -had thought of sending you to school, but as you are very backward, and -your nurse tells me you are not strong, I have decided to keep you at -home and give you a tutor for the present. I have engaged a gentleman -who will come here next week.’ - -Tim gasped: here was a revolution. ‘You don’t mean Mr. Brown?’ he asked. -Mr. Brown was the village schoolmaster. - -‘I know of no such person; that is not your tutor’s name.’ - -‘Oh!’ - -‘You can read, I suppose?’ - -‘Yes.’ - -‘What has Mr. Brown taught you? I suppose he is the schoolmaster.’ - -‘A little jography, and sums.’ - -Mr. Ebbesley hesitated for a moment as to whether it was not his duty to -examine his son in these branches of knowledge, but came to the -conclusion it was not. ‘His tutor will do all that when he comes,’ he -thought. ‘You may go now,’ he said aloud. Tim needed no urging, but was -out of the room at once. On the door-mat, however, he paused; something -perplexed him: he went through a fearful struggle with himself, then he -knocked; he was actuated by a strong desire to do right, and give -satisfaction. He heard his father say ‘Come in,’ and saw the surprised -look on his face when he saw who had knocked. Tim stood in the doorway. - -‘Well?’ said Mr. Ebbesley. - -‘If you please,’ said Tim, ‘you said I wasn’t to call you “sir”; what -shall I call you?’ - -‘Is the boy half-witted? Call me? Why, “father,” of course; what else -would you call me?’ And as the door closed again, he said to himself -sadly, ‘Fancy a child that does not _know_ what to call his own father! -Is this what I have worked and waited for?’ - -How came it that these two, having each such a wealth of affection to -bestow, could not spend it on one another? On the father’s side it -seemed to congeal in his heart; on the son’s it found vent in a -passionate devotion to almost the only being capable of inspiring it, -who had crossed his lonely little path. To the birds, to Bess, to the -brook in the woods he unburthened his heart, and babbled of Carol. But -to no living person did he mention his name, insomuch that even Mrs. -Quitchett thought he had forgotten him. One great treasure he possessed. -Not long after his friend had gone to Eton, the Court groom brought a -letter that had come for Tim from Carol, enclosed in one to Mrs. Darley. -It was written in a big schoolboy hand, and told how the writer was -well, and hoped Tim was, and how he liked Eton, and found lots of -fellows who had been at his last school; and some day he hoped Tim would -come there, when he was a big fellow. Tim should be his fag. He fagged -for Ward, who was captain of the house. He liked football,--that is the -lower-boy games, for in the house games the big fellows had it all their -own way, and it was a bore never touching the ball; and he remained -Tim’s affectionate friend, Carol Darley. And, P.S. he hoped Tim would -be careful not to turn the cage round when the squirrel was half through -the hole into the sleeping-place. - -Tim was ashamed to answer this, for though love of story-books had early -induced him to master reading, his writing was in a painfully -rudimentary state; and as little boys at Eton do not write, as a rule, -for pure love of the thing, the letter had no successors. But it -supplied Tim with a motive for working with the new tutor in a way that -astonished that gentleman, who did not know that his object was to fit -himself for Eton before such time as Carol should be old enough to -leave. - -Tim’s tutor does not require any minute description at our hands; he was -one of those extraordinary men who, though elegant scholars and, in a -way, profound thinkers, have yet missed the rewards obtained by men much -less gifted than themselves, and are glad of such hack-work as the -temporary education of the Tims of this world. It was a relief to him to -find that his pupil was only backward, not incurably dull, as were most -of the lads into whom it had been his painful duty to hammer the -rudiments of many useless branches of knowledge. - -Still, although he took a genuine interest in his charge, which Tim -repaid by a grateful feeling very near affection and wonderfully good -behaviour, he neither had nor desired any insight into the child’s -heart. Some men are born without a fondness for children, just as some -have no ear for music; their more favoured brethren look down on them -with sublime contempt, but it is absurd to blame either one or the -other. Altogether, except as the means of enabling him to prepare for -what he so ardently desired, this blameless, learned fellow-creature -played but a small part in the life of our hero. That life, but for this -new element of education, was for the present much unchanged. After the -installation of the tutor, Tim saw but little of his father, which he -scarcely regretted. Mr. Ebbesley was often away for weeks at a time, -being interested in his profession and watching many cases carefully. -Gradually he began to get briefs himself, and established chambers in -London, where he spent most of his time; his tastes were not -countrified. Mr. Darley had called and had asked him to dine at the -Court, but the talk there was so exclusively of Carol, of his letters, -his beauty, his skill in games, and thousand virtues, that it almost -maddened the poor man. - -‘You saw our boy before he went away,’ the Squire said; ‘he has taken -quite a fancy for your little fellow. We owe Mr. Ebbesley apologies, my -dear, for that unfortunate accident; and yet,’ he added graciously, ‘we -mustn’t call it unfortunate if it makes us all better acquainted.’ - -‘Thank you,’ answered his victim, to whom the Squire’s milk of human -kindness was very sour indeed; ‘I daresay your grandson was glad to find -a young companion.’ He detected a spice of pity in the reference to Tim -which was far from pleasing him. - -‘Oh well, you know,’ said grandpapa, ‘I think he felt very sorry for -having been the innocent cause of such a mishap; he has a good heart, -that boy, and is as tender as a girl for anything in pain, though he’s a -brave boy too. But nothing would satisfy him but that we must send to -inquire the same afternoon. He has a spice of Darley obstinacy in him.’ - -‘I don’t think you can call it obstinacy, dear,’ put in grandmamma; ‘I’m -sure he’s not a difficult child to guide if you’re judicious with him. -When he was quite a little tiny thing I always said, “That’s a child -that can be ruled by kindness and no other way, for he has a high -spirit.” I recollect when he first went to the school he was at, before -Eton, I went down there, and the schoolmaster said to me--I forget his -name. Kate dear, do you remember his name? was it Watt or Watkin? -Watson, was it? Are you sure? Well, it doesn’t matter--Mr. Watson said, -“He’s not a bad boy, Mrs. Darley, but very self-willed.”--”No, Mr. -Watkins,” I said, “_there_ you must allow me to correct you; _not_ -self-willed, only with a great deal of spirit,” and I’m sure I was -right. And your poor dear little boy? I hope he’s quite well again; he -didn’t look at all strong.’ - -‘Yes, he’s quite strong and hearty again, thank you; it was a mere -nothing.’ - -‘Oh, I’m glad to hear it; to me he looked delicate, but then they say -I’m always saying people are ill. May he come and see us sometimes? but -perhaps he’d not care to, now Carol is away; the house is dull without -him.’ - -‘You are very good, but he is hard at work just now, and I am afraid I -must ask you to excuse him. I have got him a tutor, and he is pursuing a -more regular course of life than has been possible hitherto. Will that -branch line the railway talk of making touch your property in any way, -Mr. Darley?’ plunging wildly away from the subject. It seemed as if they -were galling him on purpose; and when the Squire made one of his -old-fashioned courtly speeches to the effect that ‘if the more exciting -sports of India had not rendered their homely partridge and pheasant -shooting too tame for him, he hoped he would bring his gun,’ etc., he -answered bluntly that he had given up shooting, and so said good-night. - -‘A very curt person,’ said Mrs. Darley; ‘I am sure, if only in common -gratitude to that dear boy for all his goodness to little -what’s-his-name, he ought to be more civil. Fancy a little thing like -that working hard! I only hope his father doesn’t beat him.’ - -And so gradually the intercourse between the two houses languished -considerably. - -The morning after the dinner at the Court Mr. Ebbesley encountered Tim, -his lessons done, flying out of the house in his usual hatless -condition. The conversation of the Darleys was still rankling, and his -tone was not gentle as he said-- - -‘You’ve forgotten your hat.’ - -‘I never wear one except on Sunday,’ answered Tim simply. - -‘Not wear a hat!’ ejaculated his father. ‘I never heard of such a -thing; I desire you will begin at once.’ - -‘But they are so uncomfortable,’ said poor Tim. - -‘I think really it’s time you left off such childish nonsense,’ answered -Mr. Ebbesley, now really provoked. ‘Why can’t you do as other people do? -Why should my son go tearing about like a butcher-boy more than other -people’s? It was evidently high time I came home.’ - -Tim gave in and promised compliance. Carol, he remembered, wore a hat, -and of course he would have to when he went to Eton, but it was pain and -grief to him. Clearly the days of liberty were over; hats and the Latin -grammar were beginning to plough on Tim’s back and make long furrows. -Meanwhile he had discovered, Heaven knows how, the date when the Eton -holidays should begin, and he kept strict record of the days on a scrap -of paper, scoring off one each night when he went to bed. - -At last came the long-looked-for 14th of December, and with it Carol; -and now for a time Tim was really happy. All the time he could spare -from his lessons was spent in trotting about after his friend like a -little dog. Wherever Carol led Tim followed, though his soul quaked -within him at some of his own exploits. Only when Carol rode upon his -pony Tim could not accompany him; and later in the holidays, when a -schoolfellow of his own age came on a visit to the elder boy, he grew, -boylike, a little ashamed of the constant companionship of such a child -as Tim, which the latter needed no hints to tell him. But in spite of -drawbacks--and what in this world is perfect?--these were among the -happiest weeks in our hero’s life. At no later time did he have again -such unrestrained opportunities of worshipping his idol. - -Mrs. Quitchett watched all this with an apprehensive eye. No touch of -jealousy mingled in her pure devoted love for the child of her heart, -but she trembled lest some blow should lie in store for him, that should -strike him through this new affection; she did not forget, as Tim seemed -to have done, that first evening of Mr. Ebbesley’s arrival. At each of -that gentleman’s visits from London she feared some renewal of the talk -they had had on that occasion,--some fresh decree of banishment against -the unconscious intruder. That his company should be unwelcome to any -one was an idea that circumstances had combined to prevent from ever -entering Carol’s head, but he did not like Mr. Ebbesley, and so timed -his visits mostly when he was not at the manor-house, to Mrs. -Quitchett’s great relief; and whatever Mr. Ebbesley may have thought, he -said nothing, and the holidays passed over without mishap. Golden days -to Tim, speeding by as such days are only too apt to speed, never to -come back any more. Indeed, it was some time before the boys met again. - -When Easter brought Carol back to Darley, he found the manor-house shut -up; only Bess, wandering disconsolately, came and wagged her tail at -sight of an acquaintance. Mr. Ebbesley had taken his son for that -continental tour to which he had so long looked forward. It would be -hard to say what odd quirk in the man made him cling to this part of his -old dream, now that so much of it had gone astray; perhaps he had a sort -of hope that change of air and scene might develop Tim into something -more like what he had imagined him,--that by adhering rigidly to his -programme some result that he had looked for might follow even yet. - -And, indeed, in the strange new world to which he was transported, Tim -found much to excite and interest him. Mr. Ebbesley was better pleased -with him than he had been yet, but by this time it was too late for him -to overcome the feeling of constraint and fear he always felt in his -father’s presence. He was never at his ease with him. And then he was -such a child, so very young. He could not appreciate half he saw. But -William Ebbesley did not understand all that, and there was no one to -tell it to him. - -At midsummer it was Carol who was absent. A visit to a friend’s house, -measles in the village--I know Tim had them slightly about that time,--a -journey to Scotland with his grandparents, and the six weeks’ holiday -was gone without bringing him to the Court. It was a year before Tim saw -Carol again. A year, which is so little to older people, is a very long -time at Tim’s age--a long time for a little boy to remain fixed in his -loyalty to an idea. But Tim remained fixed for that year and for others -that followed, there being no one to disturb his allegiance. Carol was -his almanac, all minor events dating from the periods when he was with -him. - -How eagerly he longed for the day which, by taking him to Eton, should -put an end to the long separations; he feared nothing that might await -him there, for he would be near Carol always then, and what more could -he want than that? - - - - -CHAPTER V - - Oh! better than the world of dress, - And pompous dining-out; - Better than simpering and finesse, - Is all this stir and rout.--_Ionica._ - - -It was a proud day for Tim when his tutor announced that he considered -him sufficiently well grounded to take Fourth Form at Eton. Tim was now -twelve years old, and had adopted a more virile costume than the holland -blouse of his youth. But for that and his little learning, he was quite -unchanged from what we have known him. It is circumstances and events -that make people young or old, not the years that pass over their heads. -Some few happy people never grow up, but are boys and girls at heart -all their lives. Few of us can have reached maturity without remembering -periods when we have felt very old, and the pleasant shock of getting -younger again; and even in the oldest people’s lives, little patches of -youth blossom out now and then. But in boys the differences are even -more marked. Some are little men from the time they can walk, with all a -man’s self-reliance and self-conceit; others ripen very slowly; some -hardly at all. - -Carol, who had been to school, and lived among older people, had fancied -himself quite grown up at twelve. He dined downstairs and went out -shooting, and talked of Tim, as I have said, as ‘poor child.’ But Tim at -the same age was as much a child as he had been at nine or eight or -seven. Any one less fitted to be put down suddenly in all the stir and -hubbub and seeming heartlessness of a big public school, it would be -hard to find. But then Tim knew nothing of public school life; to him -going to Eton meant only reunion with Carol. Mr. Ebbesley was -astonished at the boy’s eagerness; he knew him to be shy and rather -nervous, and could not conceive what made him desire a way of life so -unlike anything which might naturally have been supposed to be congenial -to him. He set it down with characteristic morbidness partly to a desire -to get away from him; but on the whole he was pleased at the wish, as -manifesting a spirit more like other boys than he was wont to find in -his small son. Mr. Darley had recommended his grandson’s tutor to his -neighbour; so, to Tim’s great joy, he found himself one bright May -morning actually an Eton boy, and an inmate of the same house as Carol. - -That youth was sixteen now, and in Middle Division; and any one more -versed than Tim in the manners and customs of the strange world into -which he had been transported, could have told him that whatever hopes -he might cherish of companionship were doomed to disappointment. -Between a white-tied young man in Carol’s position, and a little scug in -Fourth Form there is a great gulf fixed. - -That first day at school seemed interminable in its dreary emptiness to -the new boy. He had a shadowy feeling that something fearful would -happen if he were a minute late for the time at which he was told to -present himself in school, and dared settle to no employment, for fear -that hour should come, and pass unheeded; and in the meanwhile the long -unemployed interval stretched away dismally before him. A hundred times -he pulled out the new silver watch his father had bought for him, to -find that just five minutes had elapsed since he last consulted it. He -ventured a little way up town, and then came back and started afresh, -but the sense of his costume, so new to him, so familiar to the -passers-by, made him feel as if every eye must be upon him, and he again -sought refuge in his bare little chamber. He felt so terribly alone and -uncared-for. He heard voices and hurrying steps in the echoing wooden -passages, and then a silence succeeded, which filled him with terror -lest some school was going on which he ought to be attending. He crept -along the passage and peeped into one or two open doors; there were -boots lying about, and little heaps of clothes: the boys had gone to -their games and a noontide stillness reigned through the big house. Down -in the yard under his window the shoeblack was singing a cheerful vulgar -song as he cleaned the knives, sometimes interrupted by calling to a -brother menial, invisible in the inner regions of pantry, scraps of -light badinage or local gossip. Tim would have liked to descend and chat -with them,--anything to break the sense of being dead and forgotten that -weighed upon his soul. - -Only the little boys were back as yet. Carol was coming that evening, -Tim told himself, and then he would lose this strange feeling of -isolation; he had a vague notion that Carol would devote at least the -first day to taking him about and showing him the place. ‘It’s a pity we -couldn’t have come back together,’ he thought; but Carol had explained -to him that it was unheard-of for any boy to return before his proper -time. The weary day wore itself out at last, but still Carol had not -arrived. Supper-time, prayer-time, bedtime, so the boys’ maid announced -to Tim who was sitting up, though it was hard work to keep the heavy -eyelids from closing. ‘What, not in bed yet, sir? why, it’s past ten. I -must take your light in another five minutes. Now make ‘aste and get to -bed; you’re as sleepy as ever you can be; we can’t ‘ave you little ones -sitting up like this; there’s trouble enough to get the lights from the -big gentlemen without that.’ Subsequent angry altercations in the -passage proved to Tim the truth of the good lady’s assertion. He obeyed, -not having courage to question the mandate of this peremptory person, -but it was sorely against his will. Carol would think it so unkind of -him, he was afraid, not to have sat up for him. But perhaps he would -come to see _him_, just to say he had come, and good-night. So he forced -himself to keep awake; he knew there was a train in about half-past ten, -and it was almost that before his light was taken. Between sleeping and -waking he was conscious of the sound of wheels, of voices and laughter -under his window, then luggage was dragged with many thumps along the -passage. Tim was wide awake again now, listening with all ears. Three or -four boys just come were going to their rooms, full of talk, loth to -separate, having many things to say. Suddenly,--yes, that was Carol’s -voice, talking eagerly, questioning, answering, laughing. Tim sat up -ready to call out that he was awake, though the room was dark, the -moment the door opened; he never doubted it _would_ open. The talkers -seemed to pause just outside his room. ‘I swear you’ve got fat; hasn’t -he?’ ‘What have you been doing with yourself?’ Then a shout. ‘Why, if -it isn’t the hyena! Come to my arms, hyena; how’s your old self? Oh! I -say, come to my room; I’ve got something to show you, if I can find it. -Never mind, Martha; it’s the first night, you know, and we shan’t be -long.’ Then the voices, still talking, turned the corner and grew -fainter as the boys retreated. Tim sat up in the dark, still waiting, -still hoping. The house wasn’t quiet yet; little bursts of merriment -reached him yet occasionally, and Martha’s voice raised in bitter -expostulation. Then more steps, renewed hope, fresh disappointment, and -silence and blackness once more. I am much afraid that amid the renewing -of so many interrupted interests, and meeting of so many former friends, -Carol had forgotten the existence of his little new schoolfellow. He -remembered him next morning though, and went in search of him. - -‘Hulloa, well, here you are,’ he said not unkindly, but with some -embarrassment, after he had shaken hands, and while he wandered round -the little room examining everything minutely, as a cover for his want -of conversation. ‘I suppose you’ll soon shake in, you know, and make -friends. Come to me if you want to know anything, and if any one bullies -you--badly--just you let me know; but no one will: this isn’t the sort -of house. Nothing I can do for you?’ The truth was he was debating -uneasily what he _could_ do for Tim. He had often been asked to ‘look -after’ boys before, with whose parents he had some acquaintance, and in -such cases he had always asked the boy to breakfast, and having been -bored for half an hour, considered his duty done, and thought no more -about him. But Tim was different; and then you couldn’t ask a lower boy -in your own house to breakfast, especially if he was going to be your -fag by and by. - -So that Tim rather weighed on Carol’s soul with a sense of ill-defined -responsibility. He wondered whether he oughtn’t to explain things to -him, but didn’t know how to begin; he felt it would be absurd to preach -him a sort of little sermon. - -‘I suppose you know pretty well about things,’ he said vaguely, with a -rather doubtful glance. - -‘Yes, I think so, thank you, Carol.’ - -‘Oh! and I say, you know,’ the elder lad rejoined carelessly, ‘you won’t -think it unkind, you know; but you’ll have to call me Darley here, you -know; of course it won’t make any difference in the holidays; but it -wouldn’t do, don’t you see.’ - -Tim promised to remember, and Carol departed feeling relieved, after a -parting injunction not to ‘sock away all his money.’ - -‘What is one to do,’ he asked of his chief friend and crony Villidge -minor, as they strolled together arm in arm towards chapel, ‘with a -small boy in one’s own house that one knows at home?’ - -‘If it’s a riddle I give it up; if not, I should say kick him,’ answered -Villidge cheerfully. - -‘No, but seriously, you know,’ persisted Carol, anxious to do his duty. - -‘Why, seriously, what _can_ you do? Nothing. Wholesome neglect, my -friend, is the one valid principle of education.’ - -So Carol laughed and determined to act on the one valid principle, the -advice being thoroughly in accordance with his own views of the subject. - -‘That’s what old Blow-hard (by which name he designated one of his -preceptors) would call the great “Layssy fair” of Political Economists,’ -he said. ‘What a mercy we’re not up to him this half!’ and so the talk -drifted into other channels. - -Tim saw him at dinner sitting far off at another table, but when Carol -looked round to the corner where the new boys sat, and nodded -encouragingly, the attention thus attracted to him made him so shy, that -he almost wished he had remained undistinguished. When the meal was -over, and he was retreating once more, he found himself the centre of -an unoccupied and inquisitive group of lower boys, who were giving -themselves airs in the passage, in the temporary absence of their social -superiors. - -‘Hulloa, new fellow, what’s your name?’ - -‘Where have you taken?’ - -‘Where do you board?’ added a wag, affecting ignorance of the house he -was in. - -At this they all laughed, and some one added-- - -‘Do you know Darley at home?’ - -‘Yes.’ - -‘Happy Darley.’ - -‘Shut up, Carter; you’re a deal too clever; some day you’ll do yourself -an injury if you don’t look out.’ - -‘Come and look at the papers, Weston,’ returned Carter hastily, who was -nervous when Weston began to chaff him, and proud of taking an interest -in public affairs in advance of most of his contemporaries. ‘The big -fellows choke up the library all day, and look thunder if a lower boy -comes in.’ - -‘They are very welcome,’ said Weston, who liked shocking Carter. ‘I’m -not going to waste a precious after-two so early in the half when I’ve -still got some tin; it don’t hold out long. Besides, the _Times_ has -gone off; it used to be full of assizes, and now it’s all politics and -that sort of rot.’ - -‘The _Police News_ is Tommy’s favourite paper, isn’t it, Tommy? Never -mind, sock us an ice and I’ll come with you, and Carter shall do -politics for the lot of us.’ - -At this point the projects, literary and otherwise, of the party were -rudely broken in upon by the unwelcome sound of ‘Lower boy-hoy-hoy,’ -roared lustily from the landing above in a fine fresh young bass before -which the trebles ceased to pipe, and six little pairs of legs went -scampering upstairs. Tim hesitated a minute, not daring to ask whether -he ought to go too, finally decided he had better, and went nervously -last. - -‘Here the last shall go. Hulloa, stop a bit; you’re new, ain’t you? You -needn’t come, you know, for your first fortnight; when you’ve been here -longer you won’t be in such a hurry to fag,’ and Tim retired very red, -among the titters of the other little wretches. He gave a start as on -entering his room he perceived Weston apparently glued to the wall -behind the door. ‘Hush! hold your tongue, Skinny,’ said that young -gentleman in a hoarse whisper; then having peeped through the crack of -the door, he added in his usual tones, ‘It’s all right; he’s sent -Sawnders; rough luck on the beggar, but he’s rather a scalliwag, so I -don’t care; besides he’s fat, and the exercise will do him good; he’d -take the prize over you any day,’ and with a valedictory punch in the -ribs to his host, delivered apparently with a view to ascertaining the -amount of flesh there, and followed by an elaborate pantomime of having -hurt his knuckles, he slid down the banisters and vanished. - -Thus Ebbesley, as he was now to be called, began to be aware of the fact -that Eton, besides being the dwelling-place of Carol, contained some -898 other boys, of ages varying from his own to twenty years, whose -existence he had in his day-dreams completely ignored, a course by no -means open to him when brought into actual contact with those young -gentlemen. Not that any one meant to be particularly unkind to him, but -he was such a forlorn-looking little creature, his high hat was so big -for him, and his fingers so inky, that it seemed somehow natural and -handy to launch a casual kick or slighting remark at him in -passing,--greetings bestowed almost unconsciously, and which would never -have affected a more robust temperament, but which the poor child took -as indications of a deep-seated ill-will towards him on the part of his -schoolfellows. It was all part of the tendency to take things hard, -predicted in old days by the wise old doctor at Stoke Ashton. He felt an -atmosphere of hostility, and froze under it, becoming very silent and -rather sulky, by no means a happy course for conciliating schoolboys. -Carol with frank boyish manners, good looks, an inborn knack of games, -and the experience of a private school, had soon found his level, and -having punched the head of Swamp minor for calling him ‘Miss Darling’ on -account of his fair skin, had established a footing in the -semi-barbarous community, to which only the strong can attain; whereas -Tim, unused to the society of boys, forbidden by the doctor to play -violent games on account of his health, too weak to withstand bullying, -yet too simple-minded to lie or cringe, the natural weapons of the -otherwise defenceless, was like a person who had been long kept in a -dark and silent room, suddenly exposed in some busy thoroughfare to the -full glare of the noonday sun; he was dazed by the fulness of life that -surged around him. That very quality which seems so full of beauty to -sentimental people like Mr. Gray (with whose works, containing the -celebrated ode to Eton College, the head-master presents the students -on their leaving), and which another poet of our own day has described -in the lines at the head of this chapter as ‘all this stir and rout,’ -was sufficiently bewildering to our little country boy set suddenly down -in the midst of it. We who look back on school-life through the -softening haze of memory, forget that the boys so perfectly satisfactory -from an æsthetic point of view have ceased to have the power of -inflicting pain upon us, while they possess it in an astonishing degree -in the case of their schoolfellows. Luckily for our hero, active -corporeal bullying had gone out of fashion before his day, but small -boys possess the art of wounding by words and looks in a perfection -quite unknown to the other sex in any stage of development, and when -they give their minds to it can make a sensitive companion’s life as -thorough a burthen to him as need be wished. You, dear lady, who read -this, if you know any little boys at school near you who have left home -for the first time, ask leave for the poor little souls to come out and -spend the day with you. Don’t stop to think that they will find it dull, -that you are not used to boys and shan’t know how to amuse them; they -won’t need amusing. It will be happiness enough to get away from school -and into a home for an hour or two. Take the little red hands in your -delicate palm and ask kind questions about home and family; you will be -doing a really charitable thing, and will win a mother’s gratitude when -the next Sunday letter is written; or if your little visitor have no -mother, Heaven help him, he needs all your goodness ten times the more. -But don’t ask the elder boys; they would rather play cricket, and won’t -say thank you. - -If Tim shed a few tears in his turn-up bedstead sometimes, in the -silence of the night, no one was aware of the fact but that remarkable -piece of furniture, whose venerable timbers must have absorbed too much -of that form of moisture, first and last, to have looked on it as a -novelty. He had no loving mother, poor soul, to whom to unburthen his -grief in long incoherent letters; he would not unnecessarily distress -Mrs. Quitchett, and of his father he was too much in awe to dare to -complain to him of anything at Eton, after his eagerness to be allowed -to go there. To the world at large--or rather at small, if the coining -of such an expression is permissible, for his public was a very limited -one--he was simply a specimen of a very common form of scug, whom -exclusion from the citizenship of games had degraded into a helotry, -which translated itself to the outward eye principally by ink and a -tendency to loaf up town and look into shop-windows, the High Street -being built in a straight line with the College, and to walk up it -requiring consequently less active volition than to go in any other -direction. It was this tendency to follow his nose, coupled with his -love of animals, that caused many of his walks to end in the back-yard -of a rather dingy little shop where ferrets, canary-birds, rabbits, and -such small game, formed the stock-in-trade of the dirtiest old man Tim -had ever seen. He was one day watching the attempts of six little birds -with red beaks to attain to freedom of action in a cage where one of -them would have been rather cramped for room, when the proprietor of the -establishment invited him in. - -‘Wouldn’t yer like to take a look round the premisses, sir? No need to -buy nothing yer don’t want. Alway glad of inspection. I’ve some -remarkable nice young rats, if they was at all in your line, and a -beautiful little terrier bitch I should like to show yer as a pictur, -not with any notion of selling.’ - -So Tim took a look round the ‘premisses,’ saw the baby rats like little -lumps of raw beef squeaking round their sharp-nosed, bright-eyed parent, -the wicked-looking lithe ferrets, the ridiculous fancy pigeons, the -stolidly munching lop-eared rabbits, and the ‘beautiful little terrier -bitch,’ a shivering, forlorn little mongrel, who was howling dismally -in a superannuated tub. A certain air of mouldy dejection seemed common -to all the denizens of this remarkable yard, in marked contrast to the -shop, where a dozen canaries were all piping and shrilling fit to burst -their swollen little yellow throats. Tim bought some rabbits, no doubt -at considerably more than their market value, but which were cheap to -him as giving him an interest in life, and a vested right to visit this -charming emporium at his own discretion. The owner of the establishment -made a handsome income out of the board and lodging of those rabbits, -but a really enterprising man is never content when on the track of a -good thing, and his efforts to dispose of other inmates of the yard to -his customer on similarly advantageous terms were as unflagging as they -were fruitless. - -‘Yer see this ‘ere ferret, sir,’ he would say; ‘he _is_ a beauty now. I -shall sell ‘im to young Lord Ratisbane as boards at the Rev. ----’s; -‘is lordship ’ll give me whatever I like to ask ‘im for sich a ferret as -that, once he gets his eyes on ‘im,’ and so forth; but Tim remained -undazzled. He possessed a fund of quiet obstinacy, and he did not like -ferrets; fancy prices given by youthful members of the aristocracy had -little empire over his imagination. But temptation takes many forms, and -this old man was as subtile as the Scriptural serpent in his adjustment -of his lures to the special character with which he had to deal. Finding -Tim’s mind not set in the direction of sport, he plied him with pets of -a more domestic nature; a tortoise of the most fascinating ugliness was -offered him on terms which he was assured were exceptionally -advantageous. - -‘I don’t want to over-persuade yer, sir, I’m sure, but if you fancies -tortoises, why yer couldn’t ‘ave a nicer one.’ - -The tortoise which the old man balanced on the palm of one extended -hand, while with the other he thoughtfully stroked a tame rat that was -ascending his shoulder, protruded its cross face and hissed at Tim with -deadly malignity, then it withdrew permanently into its shell. - -‘I’m sure it’s a very nice tortoise, if one happened to want one,’ the -customer said, with his usual grave politeness; ‘but you see I have the -rabbits to come and see here, and I don’t think the tortoise would be -happy in my room----’ - -‘In yer room, is it?’ burst in the dirty old man; ‘if you’d ‘a mentioned -it sooner, I’d ‘a told yer as I ‘ad the very thing yer wanted. If it’s a -‘ouse pet ye’re in want of, what _can_ be nicer than a good canary?’ - -‘It wouldn’t do,’ said Tim; ‘some big fellows made Biggles get rid of -his; they said it disturbed them when they wanted to do their verses.’ - -‘Why, if _that’s_ all!’ cried the irrepressible, ‘as sure as my name’s -Skelton, the thing for you is dormice: _they_ don’t sing now, do they?’ -he added, with engaging humour; ‘_they_ won’t disturb no one’s verses -now, _they_ won’t.’ - -There was no resisting the dormice. As Mr. Skelton fished the little -balls of soft fur out of the hay in an old cigar-box, barred across the -top with some bits of wire, Tim’s heart went out to them. There and then -the bargain was completed, and Mr. Skelton chuckled as he jingled the -coin transferred in the transaction, in his black and horny palm. - -‘That’s a rum little lot,’ he remarked reflectively, as he watched the -little figure balancing the big hat trotting down the sunny street with -its new possession. ‘Most on ’em, they comes in and they turns the place -upside down, and they lets out the rats, and pokes the ferrets; and it’s -“Skelton, what’s this?” and “Skelton, ‘ere,” and “Skelton, there,” and -“Quick, please, I’m in a ‘urry,”--they’re always in a ‘urry. But this -one, ‘e’s as sober and old-fashioned as a little judge, and ‘e argifies -and explains, and ‘e says “No, thank you,” and he pays ‘is money too: -ah! and ‘e won’t go on tick neither; ‘e ain’t like most on ’em.’ - -The subject of this character-study had meanwhile been visited by a -sudden thought, which he was inclined to regard almost as an -inspiration. He felt with painful acuteness the barrier that had sprung -up between himself and Carol. Their relations were as different from -what he had hoped as they well could be. The most elementary knowledge -of school-life would have shown him that this was inevitable. But -knowledge of life, school or otherwise, was just what Tim was farthest -from possessing. He remembered Carol’s fondness for his squirrel and for -all animals; he knew that they could not be companions and friends as he -had dreamed that they might, but surely it was in his power to make -Carol think of him sometimes. He thought over his plan carefully on all -sides, and by the time he reached his tutor’s, had come to the -conclusion that there could be nothing against it. - -When Carol came in to change before dinner, he was not a little -astonished to find on his table a little cage fitted up with a sort of -treadmill, and containing two dormice fast asleep in a handful of hay. -He searched in vain for any superscription that might explain this -eccentric gift, and finally came to the conclusion it must be a joke of -some of his friends. Several of his intimates were summoned, but denied -all knowledge of the affair. - -‘It must be that brute the hyena,’ said Villidge minor. ‘It’s just the -sort of thing he’d think funny.’ - -But the youth known to his associates as the hyena because, as the -matron expressed it, he was ‘prone to risibility,’ protested, on being -appealed to, that he was as innocent as the rest. - -‘If Curly has an unknown admirer whose tribute takes the form of the -smaller varieties of mammalia, I don’t see why _I_ should be held -responsible.’ - -At dinner Darley’s mysterious present was the great topic and joke of -the top table. Carol bore all the bantering good-naturedly, but after a -good deal of it began to feel a little put out. To be the object of a -joke was a new position to him, and he didn’t like it. He had a perfect -gathering in his room after two, to look at the wretched little animals, -slumbering peacefully through all the disturbance they were creating. It -being apparently impossible to discover who had put this affront upon -him, the next question was how to get rid of the creatures. To keep -dormice like a scug of a lower boy was of course out of the question. - -Meanwhile no echoes of the mirth in the upper circles of the house -penetrated as far down in the social scale as Tim, who was serenely -pluming himself on his tact and discretion. He had debated at first what -would be the right thing to write with this present, and had at last -solved the difficulty by depositing the offering anonymously. ‘He will -guess whom they are from,’ he thought; ‘no one else would think of such -a thing, or knows how he cares for animals; he will say something at -fagging-time.’ For Carol had fulfilled his promise of taking Tim for his -fag, explaining the apparent eccentricity of his choice to the -expostulating Villidge major, who was captain of the house, by saying -that he ‘knew him at home,’ and that fifteen minutes of bondage, at -which most of the small boys muttered and grumbled, became to ‘Ebbesley’ -the happiest time of the day, for then he was sure of a smile and a kind -word, and each piece of toast made for his hero’s consumption became a -labour of love; he scorched his face and burnt his fingers with perfect -equanimity, and thought scorn of Biggles, whom he once detected doing -his master’s toast at the gas. On this particular evening, however, when -he appeared as usual, Carol seemed preoccupied, and rather sulky; he -only said, ‘Let’s see, have you made your three bits, and the tea? All -right, there’s nothing else; you can go.’ - -Tim made some excuse to loiter a minute or two, apparently busy at the -cupboard, and hazarded a furtive glance round the room in search of his -present. The little cage was reposing on the top of the bed, jammed in -between a big Liddell and Scott and some fives gloves, where it had been -stuck by the maid when she cleared the table for tea. Just then Carol’s -messmate arrived, accompanied by his fag, and plunged anew into the -topic of the day. - -‘Well, Curly; found out who sent the dormice?’ - -Carol answered with what was for him to display considerable irritation, -‘I wish to goodness I could; I’d give the fellow as good a kicking as -ever he had in his life.’ - -‘Well, I can dispose of ’em for you any way; here’s Weston will take ’em -off your hands and ask no questions.’ And giving the cage and its -inmates to his fag, he added, laughing, ‘There, it’s an ill wind that -blows no one good; I’m sure you’ve been dying for some dormice all the -half, haven’t you, Weston? and I know you never keep any money after the -first week.’ - -Tommy, astonished but nothing loth, carried off his booty grinning; and -Tim, who till then had not trusted himself to look round, got out of the -room as best he could. In the passage he found his brother fag pausing -to examine his treasures. - -‘Hulloa, Skinny!’ he exclaimed, as Tim drew near, ‘here’s a queer go: -what on earth should make Darley give me a couple of dormice? I went in -expecting to get pulled for burning the toast, and see what I get -instead of a pitching into.’ - -Tim had got under a gas-lamp, so that his face was black and invisible, -but when he tried to speak, Tommy looked up suddenly. - -‘Why, you’re blubbing,’ he said; ‘whatever’s the matter?’ - -For all answer Ebbesley darted into his own room, which was not far -distant, whither, with mingled curiosity and alarm, the other followed -him. - -‘What’s up?’ he asked, not unsympathetically; and Tim, feeling he must -tell some one, sobbed out-- - -‘Oh! Weston, it was me who got the dormice, and I thought he’d like -them; you know I knew him at home, and he used to have a squirrel; I -forgot it was some time ago--and--and--’ but Tommy had collapsed into -the one chair and was shaking with laughter; the exquisite humour of the -whole affair was altogether too much for him. - -‘Oh, don’t, please don’t!’ cried Tim, to whom the matter was deadly -serious. ‘If Carol should hear, he’d be angry with me; you heard what he -said, and I meant to please him.’ - -‘What did you call him?’ cried Weston. ‘“Carol”! What a name! Oh, don’t -I just wish I was a little bigger or he a little lower down; wouldn’t I -chaff him. We’ve always wanted to know his name; most fellows thought -it was only Charles or something, but I knew it was something -outlandish, because he always had “C. Darley” on his letters, and took -such pains never to let it out.’ - -‘Oh dear!’ said poor Tim, ‘I seem to be always doing the wrong thing; -please don’t say anything about it; he wouldn’t like it--and I couldn’t -bear him to be angry with me.’ - -‘What a baby it is,’ thought Weston, looking down at the tear-stained -imploring face before him. - -‘But you’ll keep the secret,’ urged Tim despairingly; ‘never tell any -one about the dormice.’ - -Something in his utter childishness touched the softer side of Tommy’s -callous little-boy’s heart. - -‘Yes, I promise,’ he said; and he kept his word. - -‘I say, you know,’ he said next day to Tim, meeting him in one of the -passages, ‘I’ve been thinking, Skinny, those dormice are really yours, -you know; you ought to have them.’ - -‘Oh no, no!’ cried poor Skinny vehemently, ‘I never want to see them -again; and--and--thank you always for keeping the secret.’ - -So Tommy kept both the secret and the dormice until, once going home ill -for a week, and leaving no directions as to their nourishment, he found -on his return that one of them had succumbed to this prolonged fast, -which so distressed him that he made over the cage and the survivor to a -friend. - -But the fates were busy with those dormice. His new possessor, thinking -that a little sunshine would be good for the shattered constitution of -the widower, left him on the window-sill when he went to school, and -whether it was the wind, the boys’ maid, or the matron’s cat, was never -known; but on his return the little cage lay broken in the street, and -the last of his race was embarked on a sleep such as even he had never -compassed in this world. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - - How far too sweet for school he seemed to me; - How ripe for combat with the wits of men; - How childlike in his manhood.--_Ionica, II._ - - -It must not be supposed that life was uniformly dark to Tim in these -early days at Eton. He had sources of happiness quite distinct from his -glimpses of Carol, which had certainly turned out less satisfactory than -his hopes. After the dormice episode he was shyer and more constrained -in the presence of his fag-master than ever. But he had found and always -kept a marvellously kind understanding and tender friend in his tutor, -whose manly gentle soul went forth to this forlorn little specimen of -suffering humanity; he readily guessed that the path of such a baby -could not but be thorny, and though he was necessarily obliged, for many -reasons, to ignore much of what he knew, and the whole of what he -suspected, he managed in a hundred small ways to soften the existence of -the youngest and dreariest of his pupils. If I do not say much of Tim’s -Eton tutor, and the large part he filled in his history, it is because, -while among several thousand boys who have passed through the school in -the last twenty years, to describe two or three is fairly safe, it were -quite otherwise to draw anything like an accurate picture of one of the -comparatively few men who have filled the post of tutor there during the -same period. So I may only note in passing the fact of his untiring and -thoughtful kindness, and the grateful affection it elicited in return. -His study was a haven of refuge to Tim on many a rainy after-four, while -the employment said by Dr. Watts to be provided for that class of member -was busily occupying numerous pairs of idle hands in other parts of the -house. There or on the banks of the kind old river in the shady -playing-fields he spent long happy hours with Scott or Shakespeare for -companion. Mr. Ebbesley was liberal in the matter of pocket-money, and -as Tim’s tastes were not as a rule expensive, he was able to revel in -delightful books. Had his examinations been in authors of his own -selection I have no doubt he would have attained the highest honours. - -Another favourite resort of his was the old chapel in the Castle at -Windsor: the grand quiet of the place, with its dim, coloured light and -ghostly armorial flags ranged overhead, soothed and comforted him after -many a bitter childish trial; but the highest pleasure came from the -pealing organ and the pure true voices of one of the best of English -choirs. To Tim, whose soul was full of melody, but whose only experience -of sacred music had been the not very perfect performances in the -village church at home, the grand outbursts of song which the great -musicians had given from their hearts to the worship of God, were as -waters in the desert. The first time he heard the beautiful prayer that -Mendelssohn has wedded to immortal music, the yearning for doves’ wings -to fly away and be at rest, rendered by a fresh boy’s voice, the tears -gathered in his eyes, and he forgot where he was, standing wrapped in an -ecstasy, his soul afloat on the wings of the music. It seemed to him as -if he and this other boy no older than himself were somehow one, that -the pearly notes he was listening to did not come from the shiny -emotionless little chorister whose mouth was moving, but from the inmost -depths of his own heart. - -Tim could not really sing a note, though he would dearly have liked to; -but he often had this feeling afterwards, in the following winter, when -he joined the musical society and used to sit silent and happy between -two deep-lunged little monsters, and have all the sensation of pouring -forth his being in song. Carol, who had a lusty baritone, and a fondness -for music of the more robust and cheerful order, having been ordered to -recruit trebles at his tutor’s, and finding the lower boys for the most -part unwilling to display their accomplishments, had had recourse in -despair to his fag, who was of course enchanted with the prospect. - -‘I’m afraid I shan’t be much use, but I should like to come,’ he said -modestly, and come he did with exemplary punctuality. - -His relations with his contemporaries were still, for the most part, -lacking in cordiality. He had no gift of making himself known to them, -and they were not sufficiently interested in him to take trouble in -getting to know him. The discovery at the beginning of the Michaelmas -half that he was forbidden to play football, set the finishing touch to -the contempt his house-fellows were inclined to entertain for him, and -except in school or at the musical society he came in contact with no -boys but such as boarded at his tutor’s. There was one youth, however, -who, contrary to all likelihood, took a desultory interest in Tim, and -that was Tommy Weston. The episode of the dormice had disclosed to Tommy -certain things about Tim that lay outside the range of his daily -observation of life and character, and being of an inquiring turn of -mind, he determined to frequent this new specimen of boy, taking at -first a purely analytic and microscopic view of him, with which, as the -weeks went by, something of a kindlier and more human sentiment began to -mingle. I don’t know what has become of Tommy Weston since, but in those -days he promised to be a very remarkable man. He possessed indomitable -tenacity and strength of purpose, coupled with a mercurial gaiety of -temperament, endless patience, entire disregard of public opinion, -immense courage, a keen sense of the ridiculous, and a composure and -self-possession on which the most trying circumstances were powerless to -produce any effect. To Tim he was a most marvellous outcome. At first -the little boy was rather alarmed by this remarkable phenomenon, though -humbly grateful for his attentions, but by degrees he came to be more at -home with him, and Tommy was the only person to whom he ever confided -some part of his feeling for Carol; only a very little and in moments of -rare expansion, for Tommy was not sentimental, and regarded subjective -conversation as more or less profitless. But the shy revelations of -character made by Tim struck him, as I have said, as a ‘queer start,’ -and as such were regarded by him with a wonder which that youth was glad -to mistake for sympathy. ‘It is certainly not on the principle of Mary -and the lamb,’ he said to himself, ‘that Skinny’s partiality can be -explained, for Darley don’t “love the lamb, you know.” Fancy Skinny -wandering into tutor’s upper set at private, and Villidge and all of ’em -hollering out in pupil-room, “What makes the lamb love Curly so?”’ and -he was so tickled by the weirdness of this notion that he accosted Tim -as ‘lambkin’ next time he saw him, and chuckled to himself, remarking -generally, ‘What rot nursery rhymes were,’ in a manner calculated to -mystify that simple-minded young person. Indeed, he was in such high -good-humour that he invited him into his room, an apartment decorated -with all manner of ingenious inventions from designs of Tommy’s own; -such as an elaborate apparatus in which the poker was involved for -shutting the window without leaving bed, and another by which water was -discharged on any assailant who might attempt to turn the sleeping -inhabitant up in that piece of furniture. This last machine, which was -constructed with much ingenuity out of a bandbox, a broken jug, seven -yards of twine, the leg of one of his chairs (propped, in the absence of -its limb, on his hat-box), and the cover of his Gradus, was subsequently -destroyed by his tutor, after deluging the matron (Tommy swore -accidentally), who was coming to administer medicine when he stayed out -in collection-week. These and similar treasures were displayed to the -wondering eyes of Skinny, as well as a cardboard box in which he kept -the prime fetishes of his worship; his name, which it is hardly -necessary to mention was not Tommy, and the date of his birth, written -very neatly in his own blood, a sheet of broad rule completely covered -with a design in concentric and intersecting circles, of which the -object did not distinctly appear, and another, on which he had jotted -down the numbers of all the cabs he had ever ridden in, on his rare -visits to the metropolis, and reduced the added result, by some process -inscrutable by the unmathematical mind, to pounds, shillings, and pence. - -Now it happened one Sunday in the Lent term when the flats around Eton -were swept by a relentless east wind, that Tommy had agreed with a -kindred soul from another house to go with him to the Ditton woods and -gather primroses; not that the ‘primrose by the river’s brim’ was -anything more to either of them than the yellow primrose it was to the -gentleman in the poem, but it lent an object to their walk, and a -delicious flavour of the illegal in the combined facts that they would -trespass, and very probably be late for lock-up, which in those days, -when chapel was at three, closed the period of Sunday afternoon leisure. -Whether Tommy’s friend was detected talking in chapel and made to stay -at home and do his Sunday questions, or merely turned lazy and preferred -to read a book by the fire, I have no means of deciding with certainty; -but the fact remains that he threw Tommy over when it was too late to -make other arrangements, to the no small disgust of Master Weston, who -was not fond of abandoning any enterprise he had once formed. In these -straits he bethought him of Tim, who was quite sure to have no -engagement, and went in search of him. Tim was writing his weekly letter -to his father, but consented readily to accompany him, if he would wait -till he had finished; and the concluding sentences were rendered even -more laborious than usual to the scribe, by the distracting behaviour of -his companion, who was occupying the interval with a sort of highland -fling, while he sang to a well-known Scottish air, just then -familiarised to Southern ears by the base uses of a comic song, these -remarkable words---- - - Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, - Oh, Jerusalem, the costermonger’s donkey. - -‘Oh! please, Tommy, don’t make that dreadful noise,’ said poor Tim. ‘How -can I get done?’ - -‘Dreadful noise, indeed! it’s a Sabbath hymn, you profane little -wretch,’ retorted the irrepressible, at the same time pulling Tim’s inky -pen upwards through his fingers, to teach him, as he said, proper -respect to his elders. - -At length the epistle was concluded, and when Tommy had stuck the stamps -on wrong side up in the bottom left-hand corner (which called forth a -severe little lecture on slovenly ways in Tim’s next letter from home) -they started on their walk. Through the College and playing-fields all -went well, but once in the open fields beyond, their progress was -considerably retarded by various skirmishes with the class magnificently -lumped together by the boys, in their sublime innocent snobbishness, as -‘cads,’ and including the sons of all tradesmen, farmers, and the -labouring classes generally, who happened to inhabit the neighbourhood. -There was not a ‘cad’ within miles with whom Tommy was not on intimate -terms; he knew the Christian names, pursuits, and family history of -every old man or woman who drove into Eton for purposes of trade and -barter, the commodities in which they dealt, and the days when they -might be expected. There was one elderly lady whom he addressed as -Sarah, and to whom he invariably offered marriage, regardless of the -fact that she was a matron of many years’ standing; and an old man in a -red waistcoat, who had business relations with some one in the town, -would hang about for hours watching for an opportunity to slip unnoticed -past the window from which this awful boy had a torrent of ever-varying -chaff and nicknames ready to pour out upon him on all occasions. With -the rising generation of cad-dom, the lads of his own age or a little -older, his relations were, however, by no means so friendly. He had -fought with nearly all, and licked most; and on the few Herculean youths -who had succeeded in forcing him to beat a retreat his vengeance had -subsequently descended, when their evil stars led them to pass his -dwelling, in the form of coals, sugar, earth from his flower-box, or the -inside round of paper off the tops of raspberry jam; sometimes the pot -itself, if nearly empty of its succulent contents, would startle the -echoes of a dark night as it crashed to ruin against the palings of the -opposite house, while a muttered curse succeeded the jaunty whistling of -the passing victim. - -The two boys were crossing a ploughed field where the ridges on which -they stepped crumbled beneath their feet, dry and powdery under the -March wind, when they encountered a detachment of small boys of the -class described above, headed by a youth a few years older than the -rest, who wore his hat on one side in a raffish manner, calculated to -provoke remark. Tommy inquired politely if it was stuck on with glue, or -how otherwise it retained its position. - -‘Just you ‘old _your_ row, young Weston,’ retorted the insulted party; -‘I knows you’; thus implying some mysterious secret hold over Tommy, -which that youth was hasty to repudiate. - -‘Take care not to come too close,’ he replied with studied moderation, -‘or I _may_ hurt you.’ - -‘What, _you_? You’re too young and too small; ‘it one o’ your own size,’ -said the champion, and all the satellites applauded. - -Tommy, feeling the moment for decisive action had arrived, made a -threatening advance, whereupon the small fry scattered and fled; and -their leader, seeing himself abandoned by his myrmidons, also retired, -but in good order, and still hurling taunts, which increased in -bitterness in proportion as the chances of pursuit seemed to grow less. -Tim, I need not say, was made very unhappy by this sort of encounter; -and what with these numerous delays and the fact that they had started -late for their walk, the brief afternoon was already far spent when they -arrived at the paling they must climb to enter the Park. Tim pulled out -his watch and looked at it doubtfully. - -‘We haven’t _more_ than time to get home before lock-up,’ he said. - -‘Well?’ inquired Tommy, who was already astride upon the paling, as -though Tim had started some question entirely foreign to the matter in -hand. - -‘If we go on, we shall be late,’ persisted Tim. - -‘Oh! is _that_ all?’ said Tommy, who had a sublime contempt for law when -it interfered in any way with what he proposed to himself to do. As I -have said, the primroses were less than nothing to him, but having -started to pick primroses, primroses he would pick, and a lion in the -path would not have deterred him for a moment. Now Tim had, on the -contrary, profound respect for law and order, and if he unwittingly -transgressed the most formal of little school-rules, felt unhappy and -criminal for days afterwards. - -‘I think I shall go back,’ he said after a pause. - -‘You may do as you please,’ said his companion; ‘_I_’m going to get -primroses,’ and therewith he slid down on the other side of the paling -and was lost to view. ‘Are you coming?’ he shouted back. - -Tim still stood irresolute: he was alone. Tommy having vanished, it -seemed easier to withstand his influence than when under that cold eye -from the top of the fence. He was cold; he did not want to be out late; -he did not want to get a pœna; above all, he did not want to shirk -fagging. - -‘I shall go back,’ he persisted, and he went. - -‘Give my love to tutor,’ Tommy called from within, ‘and tell him not to -worry about me; I shall most likely be back for early school to-morrow.’ - -Tim had a dreary walk homewards; the wind, which had before been with -them, was now in his face, and he had to butt at it, head down, and -hands deep in his trouser-pockets. Discomforts became prominent which -had before only made a scarcely noticed background to Tommy’s enlivening -conversation, and the somewhat perilous excitement of his passages of -wit with the passers-by. Tim began to wonder vaguely, not without -terror, whether he would fall into any of the wasps’ nests that his -companion had so successfully stirred up as they came along. Visions of -angry cads, still smarting with a sense of unavenged insults, flitted -through his uneasy mind, and caused him to hug the hedgerows rather than -launch across the bare fields, where his figure would be a more -conspicuous object. He tried to determine on a course of action in case -of attack. Tommy, he had observed, advanced boldly in such cases, -assumed the aggressive attitude, and the assailants fled; it seemed to -him a fresh proof of the unsatisfactoriness with which matters were -arranged in this world, that the people who seemed to possess the knack -of coming scot-free out of awkward situations were precisely those to -whom it was of least importance to do so. Something told him that it -would be in vain for _him_ to attempt the same line as Tommy; some -irresolution or faltering at the last minute would be sure to betray -him, and his assumed boldness would only make his position the less -pleasant. The conviction was forced in upon him that to make your -antagonist unwilling to fight, _you_ must be genuinely anxious to do -so. ‘And in _that_ case,’ reasoned he, ‘there would be no pleasure, but -the reverse, in seeing the other fellow sheer off.’ All of which seemed -to him mysterious and unkind. ‘It would surely have been as easy to -settle human nature on a plan that should enable each individual to -obtain what he wanted.’ Nor were his apprehensions altogether -groundless. - -As he passed along one of the leafless hedges a hard object whizzed by -him, and rattled on the frozen turf beside him; there was little or no -doubt it was a stone. Through the hedge, which was thick and tangled, -though the leaves were off, he could dimly detect moving forms and -smothered laughter. He tried to persuade himself that the thrower had -only aimed at something in the hedge, and that if he kept quiet they -would pass on without noticing him; so he crouched down as close to the -bank as possible, and kept very still. - -I am compelled as a truthful biographer to admit that physical courage -was not a characteristic of my hero, and as he held his breath in the -undignified attitude he had assumed, he could hear his heart beat loud -with apprehension. There was a pause, and then a muttered conference, -and presently another stone followed the first. Placed as he was, Tim -was pretty safe, and two or three succeeding missiles passed innocently -over him. Then came another pause; the attacking party were surprised -that no attempt was made to return fire, and they feared an ambush. - -The fact was that he of the hat had joined forces with some other lads -of his own size, discarding the crew of weaklings who had deserted him -in his hour of need, and they had taken up a position in which to waylay -Tommy on his return to Eton, and seize an unique opportunity of wiping -off old scores by humiliating their enemy without doing him any great -injury. It is only fair to them to state that there is no good ground -for supposing that they deliberately attacked Tim knowing him to be -alone; they probably thought his warlike friend was with him, and the -stones were only meant to open the affair, and force Tommy to disclose -himself. Having debated among themselves, they could think of no better -plan than to fire another volley, which they accordingly did, and Tim -had closed his eyes and given himself up for lost when he heard -unmistakable signs of terror and confusion behind the hedge, and then -the sound of a general stampede of hastily retreating footsteps. - -The next minute some one cleared the hedge and alighted close to him, -and a well-known voice exclaimed, ‘The brutes! they were rocking a -little fellow; I wish to goodness I’d caught one of them. Hullo! -Ebbesley, is that you? Why, how the deuce did _you_ get into this sort -of row?’ - -Tim hardly yet realised that it was Carol who had dropped, as it were, -out of the gray sky for his deliverance, and who now stood before him, -with cheeks flushed by wind and running, holding out large kind hands to -pull him on to his feet again. He felt relieved and grateful, and yet -somewhat ashamed of the position in which he had been discovered, and -began hastily to explain-- - -‘I had gone to walk with Weston, and he said something to that fellow, -and he didn’t like it, and Weston went after him, and he ran away; and -then we separated, because I wanted to get back----’ - -‘And our friend meanwhile conceived the brilliant plan of lying in wait -for you, and shying stones at you from behind a hedge. What -distinguished bravery!’ interrupted Villidge minor, who had been with -Carol, and who now joined the party through an adjacent gap. - -‘What an infernal coward!’ cried Darley, whose eyes flashed with martial -ardour. - -‘He is, luckily for him, beyond the reach of chastisement for the -present,’ rejoined the more phlegmatic Villidge; ‘though I flatter -myself that a well-directed pebble was not altogether without effect on -the calf of his leg. You’d better cut home, Ebbesley, if you want to be -in time for lock-up, and thank your stars Darley and I happened to come -along when we did.’ Tim would have liked to thank them, but found no -words, so trotted off as fast as his legs would carry him. - -‘It’s just as I thought, Curly,’ continued Villidge, as he and Carol -followed at a more leisurely pace; ‘it’s that little monster Weston who -has brought your unhappy fag into the scrape in which we found him. I -saw them together the other day, and reflected that collapse must sooner -or later be the fate of such a frail little vessel in the same stream -with such an iron pot as Master Tommy.’ - -But Carol did not at once answer; he was watching the queer little -figure scudding along in front of them, and the sight of that small form -buffeted by the bitter weather somehow suggested to him how unfit such a -creature must be to fight his way through the rough places of lower-boy -life. - -‘Do you remember,’ Villidge continued, also looking at Tim, ‘how much -exercised you were when Ebbesley first came as to what you could do for -him, in the way of looking after him, and that sort of thing? I’m -thinking that this piece of knight-errantry of yours in his behalf comes -most happily to solve the difficulty; you could hardly have done him a -better turn, or looked after him to more purpose than by snatching him -from the fate of the first martyr.’ - -‘There’s not much knight-what’s-his-name in having a lot of lubberly -beasts run away when you look at ’em,’ replied Carol modestly. -‘Seriously though, it had just occurred to me that perhaps I hadn’t done -all I might have to make that poor little fellow’s life easy to him.’ - -‘I can’t see that it is incumbent on you to act dry-nurse to all my -tutor’s scugs; you might keep a piece of pumice-stone in your room to -take the ink off their grimy little hands, or save up the rough copies -of your verses to stuff your young friend’s hat, and keep it a -hair’s-breadth or two higher above his ears, but I really don’t see what -else you could do for him.’ - -‘Don’t you think such a boy as that must be rather bullied among the -small fellows?’ - -‘Oh! I daresay not a bit more than is good for him; and besides, if -Tommy’s taken him up he’ll be all right; for though he’ll probably land -him in rows with the beaks, he’s an oracle among the lower boys, and if -he says he’s a good sort, they’ll all discover they always said so. So -don’t make yourself unhappy about him.’ - -And as Carol was not fond of making himself unhappy, he took the -advice. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - - Happy places have grown holy; - If we went where once we went, - Only tears would fall down slowly - As at solemn sacrament. - - MRS. BROWNING. - - -It is not my intention to trace in detail Tim’s career at school, which, -after all, presents few points of interest. His first two years were -certainly not a period of unmixed enjoyment; but other boys before and -after him have gone through much the same experience without taking much -harm from it. And after a time boys get tired of persecution, as of -other pursuits. It is not worth their while to continue to bully, unless -there is some special reason for it, and in Tim’s case there was none; -his offences were all purely negative, sins of omission, absence of -qualities decreed to be necessary to salvation by the _Vehm-gericht_ of -collective boyhood through many generations. - -Villidge was right to a certain extent in his prophecy of the good -effects likely to spring from the patronage of Tommy. There is little or -no doubt that Tim’s ultimate admission to a recognised social standing -owed its first small beginnings to his intimacy with that eccentric -youth. Boys go in flocks; and if it is the fashion to treat one of their -number with unkindness, while the active throw each his little stone, -the passive turn aside and stop their ears to the victim’s groans. We -are not all thieves, and are in the habit of returning thanks for that -fact, but when a fellow-traveller has fallen in with a band of these -gentry, the proportion of Samaritans to priests and Levites is not -large, and nowhere smaller than among boys. But when the tide turns, and -some one with more character than the rest picks up the wounded comrade -and gives him a word of encouragement, pronouncing him ‘not such a very -bad lot,’ the rest veer round, and peace is restored. It is impossible -to fix the exact date of the change; the deliverance is as intangible as -the persecution. To Tim it came far more slowly than Villidge, with his -happy knack of establishing coincidence between his wishes and -probability, had foretold for the comfort of Darley’s uneasy conscience. - -It is true that Weston was popular among his contemporaries, but at the -time of the Ditton expedition he was still in Fourth Form, and the -Remove little boys, though they frequented him freely and to a certain -extent admired him, would not have accepted his opinion of a third -person where it differed in any way from their own. But a young man who -had been for almost two years in Fifth Form could not be expected to -recollect these subtle distinctions of lower-boy life. - -The leaven was working surely, however. Tommy stuck staunchly to his -protégé, as they mounted the lowest rungs in the ladder together, and by -Tim’s third summer-half, when he had been two years at Eton, had learnt -to keep his fingers freer from ink, and to wear hats that fitted him, he -stood firmly on a platform from which he could look back with tolerable -equanimity on his past troubles. This half Fifth Form would open its -portals to him, and he would cease to be a lower boy; but, alas! this -was also Carol’s last half at school, and little as had come of his -dreamed-of companionship, that was a thought on which Tim could hardly -trust himself to dwell. He had made a few little acquaintanceships since -it had become the fashion to find good in him, and was no longer -desolate, but he did not make friends readily, and these new connections -with the world around him left quite untouched the old ruling devotion -of his life whose roots were very deep in him indeed. Carol was almost -more his hero than ever. The very separateness of their respective -positions served to enhance his devotion. It seemed quite right and -natural that Carol should be a king among men, should stand at the -corner of the street with other godlike beings, his peers--yet how -immeasurably below him in the estimation of his faithful admirer--should -carry a cane (badge of the greatest honour!) at football matches in the -winter, and play cricket for the eleven in summer. His walls were -decorated with caps of many colours--the eleven, the ‘Field,’ the house -cap, and many more. Pewter cups won in athletic contests occupied little -carved brackets over his chimney-piece, and the rules of ‘Pop’ framed in -pale blue ribbon sprawled over half the available space on one side of -his little room. In short, he was the typical ‘swell’ or successful -public-school boy, and a very kindly, gentle, magnanimous fellow into -the bargain, as became his greatness. - -Tim used to trot off to the playing-fields in those long hot days, and -lie there under the trees, watching the light athletic figure clad in -white flannel springing hither and thither in the game, till the other -boys, knowing his indifference to their sports, wondered sometimes at -the regularity of his attendance at all the cricket matches. - -It was Saturday after-twelve, and Tim was occupying his usual corner, -with his rug spread on the edge of the shadow, and a half-eaten bag of -cherries beside him. The first innings was just over, and Carol, -released from his duties in the field, came sauntering round the ground -arm-in-arm with another magnificent young cricketer like himself. Tim -was turning his attention, no longer claimed by the game, to the firm -red fruit, when he heard his name spoken in the voice that never failed -to make his nerves thrill. - -‘Hulloa, Ebbesley!’ said his lord and fag-master loftily, but not -unkindly, ‘what are you up to? Wasting your time as usual, eh?’ - -‘I was looking at you,’ answered the little boy simply and truthfully, -wholly unaware that his reply partook of the nature of repartee. Carol -flushed and looked a little annoyed; then he laughed. - -‘That’s one for me, anyhow,’ he said, as he resumed his walk. - -‘Who’s your young friend?’ asked his companion. - -‘My fag; he’s one of the queerest little beggars I ever saw; I know him -at home, and am supposed to look after him. I’ve been trying for two -years to discover the meaning of the term, and the duties connected with -it.’ - -‘You’ve some cheek, answering Darley like that,’ said the stout -Sawnders, who, too lazy to bring down a rug, and having neither money -nor credit wherewith to obtain cherries, had decided to bestow his -company on Tim in return for a share of those luxuries. - -‘I didn’t mean to be cheeky,’ said Tim, aghast; ‘do you suppose he was -angry?’ - -‘I don’t believe he half liked it, before another swell; he got very -red.’ - -‘Oh dear me!’ said Tim wearily, ‘I seem always to say the wrong thing.’ - -‘Well, you’d better come back to my tutor’s now, anyway,’ said Sawnders; -‘it’s a quarter to two, and they won’t begin the next innings before -dinner.’ - -As they went towards College, Tim, whose mind was busy with the thought -that he had offended Carol, felt himself taken by the scruff of the -neck, and turning to expostulate, found himself in the grasp of his -tutor, who regarded him with keen friendly eyes. ‘Well, little boy,’ he -said, ‘have you been looking at the match?’ - -‘Yes, sir.’ - -‘All after twelve?’ - -‘Yes, sir.’ - -‘And you mean to come back after four?’ - -‘Yes, I think so, sir.’ - -‘Have you done all your work?’ - -‘Yes, sir.’ - -‘Then I think you had much better come out with me. You don’t care a rap -about cricket, I know, and only come here to loaf. Mr. ---- and I are -going to drive to Burnham Beeches this afternoon, and walk back after -tea. You and Sawnders can come too, and when you see Weston, you may -request the pleasure of his company, if his engagements in Sixpenny and -his numerous punishments will permit.’ - -‘Oh, thank you, sir; that will be jolly!’ - -So the little boys scudded off in search of Tommy, whom they found with -his head in a basin of water, preparing for dinner. They communicated -their tutor’s message, while he sputtered in his towel. Tommy was -already relatively for his age a celebrity in the cricketing world, and -doubted if a whole after-four could be spared from that game. - -‘As to the pœnas, to-morrow’s Sunday, and I shall have lots of time to -do them. I’ve only got the eleven o’clock lesson to write out and -translate four times, and a hundred lines, and three copies of extra -work. Well, hang Sixpenny for once; I’ll devote this afternoon to the -beauties of nature.’ - -‘I like tea at that cottage,’ said Sawnders meditatively. ‘They have -such good bread and butter, and real cream, and I shouldn’t wonder if -tutor took a cake.’ - -‘Sawnders, you’re a white hog,’ said Tommy; ‘Skinny and I are above such -trifles. I hope there’ll be jam.’ - -It was a lovely afternoon in the late hay-harvest, and the drive was -delightful. The last of the wild roses still lingered in the hedges, and -the little grass that remained uncut was starred with great white field -daisies. The boys on the back seat of the fly, in change coats and straw -hats, were in a holiday mood, and full of silly talk. Tommy had mounted -the box, and sat beside the driver, of whom he was an old friend, and it -was not till the vehicle very nearly carried away the gate-post on -Dorney Common that he was discovered to be in possession of the reins. - -‘We had better leave Eton by the quiet way,’ his tutor had said; ‘there -are so many of the authorities who have just claims on Weston’s leisure, -that we shall never get him safe out of the place if we attempt to drive -through College.’ - -Of this delightful man’s pleasant relations with his pupils I have -spoken elsewhere. Mr. Ebbesley, who had been brought up at a private -school, and in the good old days when boys regarded their schoolmaster -as their natural enemy, had looked forward, not, it is to be feared, -with unmixed dissatisfaction, to the idea that his son would turn to him -for sympathy and help in the inevitable scrapes which official severity -was apt to magnify into crimes. He had made his first visit to Eton -after Tim’s admission prepared of course to uphold authority and do all -that was right and proper, but determined not to be too severe with the -boy for his transgressions of the rigid letter of school law; he was -going to be very large-minded and understanding. And behold! there had -been nothing to sympathise about; above all, nothing to condone. The -little boy was so law-abiding that he could have lived without -transgression under a far stricter code, and whereas he had been cold -and somewhat uncommunicative on several other points, he kindled into -something very like enthusiasm when he spoke of his tutor’s kindness to -him. Mr. Ebbesley told himself that he was very glad it was so, but it -seemed to him hard to be the only person without the power of awakening -his son’s affection. - -Is it not significant that this chapter, which is the happiest in my -story, should be one of the shortest? This was a day in Tim’s life in -which birds sang and flowers bloomed for him, and for twelve hours the -murmur of the sad undercurrent that flows all through his history had -faded from the ear. For my part, I am so glad to think of this -afternoon’s pleasure that he had, that I cannot refrain from leaving it -on record, though it does not advance the action of my drama, a -consideration which I am well aware a writer is bound to respect. I have -been to Burnham at all seasons of the year, from earliest spring, when -there is hardly a wash of green on the noble trees, to latest autumn, -when the ground is ankle-deep in glorious colour, and it would be hard -to say when there is most beauty there. I have never visited the spot in -midwinter, but I am quite sure that if one did the familiar glades would -have some appropriate charm for his delight, so regularly does each -season lend its own especial gifts to deck that favoured place. At Tim’s -age, as a rule, a love of nature for her own sake is a rare possession; -it is a compensation kept to console older people for the loss of so -many other enjoyments that then made the world bright to them. But -perhaps it was because his young life was so lacking in the ordinary -elements of boyish happiness, that this gift of later age was vouchsafed -to our little lad. Certainly the sunlight on the smooth gray trunks, -and the peculiar dappled shadows on the sward that only beech-leaves can -cast, had a secret to tell him on this blest half-holiday, which would -have been Hebrew and Greek to his two playmates. I think it must have -been this knowledge of the country as the anodyne for bruised hearts, -which made _As You Like It_ his favourite play, for Tim read -Shakespeare, in Mr. Bowdler’s edition with which his father had taken -care to provide him. Burnham was Tim’s Ardennes, and it would hardly -have surprised him to come on the cousins walking in the wood while -Touchstone lay hard by among the bracken. - -By this time, however, he knew too much to communicate such fancies as -these to his companions. The three ran down steep places, jumped off -banks into heaps of last year’s leaves that still lay piled in some of -the hollows, and climbed the trees, on one of which Tommy, who was -certainly very unlike Orlando in other respects, inscribed his own -initials and those of the party, including his tutor, who is ignorant to -this day of the liberty taken with his signature. - -Tim ran, climbed, and shouted like the others, and enjoyed himself -amazingly. He and Sawnders entrenched themselves in a hollow tree which -Tommy was to carry by assault armed with a long stick he had found; but -the game had to be abandoned on account of Sawnders’s not unnatural -objection to being hit really hard, which Tommy treated with the most -withering scorn. - -‘It isn’t funny to hurt people,’ said the injured defender of the tree, -ruefully caressing his wounded member; and this led to a discussion on -the nature of true wit, which lasted till their tutor came to call them -to tea, and inform them parenthetically that they had made themselves -look ‘even more disgusting objects than usual.’ - -Then for the first time Tim noticed with some surprise how tired he -felt; indeed for a few moments he was so white that the other master -who accompanied them, observing him, thought he was going to faint. - -‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ said Tim; ‘I suppose I’ve done more than usual -to-day. I didn’t feel tired till we stopped.’ - -Sawnders at once discovered that he was quite used up too, but was -promptly snubbed by his tutor. - -‘That little Ebbesley does not look at all strong,’ said the other -master, when the two men were for a little out of earshot of their young -companions; ‘are you not anxious about him?’ - -‘He is certainly delicate,’ Tim’s tutor answered thoughtfully; ‘but I -hope he may outgrow it in time,’ and on the homeward drive he was very -careful of Tim. - -So happy had the boy been in the guileless amusements of the afternoon -that for the time he actually forgot to think of Carol. But as they -neared Eton on their return the recollection of their encounter of the -morning and the possibility that he had offended him came back with a -sudden pang to his mind--a pang which was proved to be quite superfluous -the very next day. - -It was Sunday morning, an ideal bright summer Sunday, and Carol was -standing at his tutor’s door in rather a chastened frame of mind. The -bells were ringing for service, and from out the houses the boys were -issuing, each in his best clothes and with a generally brushed-up -appearance. The sun shone upon the house opposite, and made little -silver shields of the leaves of the magnolia that was trained against -it. Carol was thinking regretfully how few more Sundays he should sit in -the dear familiar chapel, a boy among boys; and looking back across the -happy years of his school-life,--hardly a cloud had dimmed their -brightness;--in retrospect they seemed one unbroken march of -friendliness, gaiety, pleasure, and modest triumph. Eton had treated him -very kindly, and he was sorry to leave. Just then who should come out -but little Tim. He had recovered to some extent from his fatigue of the -day before, and had refused to stay out, though his tutor had suggested -the legitimacy of such a course if he were so inclined. - -As it chanced, the two were alone. Carol laid a kind hand upon him and -called him ‘Tim.’ The old nickname brought a quick flush of pleasure -into the colourless face; at Eton Carol always called him ‘Ebbesley.’ - -‘It’s a great pity, Tim,’ the big boy was saying, ‘that we’ve seen so -little of one another; that’s the worst of this place, everything goes -in layers. If a fellow isn’t in your division, with the best will in the -world you can never see anything of him.’ - -‘You’ve always been very good to me, Darley,’ Tim answered gratefully. - -‘You won’t have to call me “Darley” any more now I’m leaving. I say, -Tim, will you write to me sometimes next half and tell me all about the -old place? All my friends of my own standing are leaving too; and after -all, you know, you are really the oldest friend of them all.’ - -‘Oh, Carol, may I?’ cried Tim; but just then an eruption of other boys -occurring from the narrow doorway, he departed to chapel without -expressing himself further. He trod upon air; Carol had called him by -his old name, and bade him do the like by him, had spoken of their long -friendship, had asked him to write to him. And he had been thinking he -had offended him! Tim offered up genuine thanksgivings in the old -chapel, where so many generations of boys have knelt on the threshold of -life, as he and Carol were kneeling then. - -It happened that morning that the first lesson was the beautiful lament -of David over his dead friend Jonathan; and Tim, listening to the -history of those two friends long ago, felt his love for his friend -almost a religion to him. ‘Thy love to me was wonderful,’ said the voice -of the reader, ‘passing the love of woman.’ ‘What woman could ever love -him as I do?’ thought Tim, as he looked naturally to the seat where -Carol sat. At that moment a sunbeam from some hole high in the roof fell -on the golden curly head which seemed transfigured; and as Tim’s hungry -eyes rested on the face of his friend, he turned towards him and smiled -upon him in his place. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - - Maud is not seventeen, - But she is tall and stately. - - TENNYSON’S _Maud_. - - -Carol and Tim travelled home together at the end of the half, speeding -through the golden summer. It was early August, and everywhere the -full-eared grain swayed ripe for the sickle. Here and there the harvest -had already begun to be gathered in, and the fields were dotted with the -reapers, cutting and binding into sheaves. Larks full-throated hung -poised in the quivering air, the woods were in their richest summer -green; poppies in field and hedgerow, geraniums on lawn and terrace, -blazed each its own scarlet. Shadows were small and black, and lights -broad and warm. And above all stretched the sky, cloudless to the -horizon, and blue as Carol’s eyes. - -To be nearly nineteen, to have left school behind one, to be six feet -high, to have fine broad shoulders, and a brown, honest, handsome face, -good teeth, good spirits, and a good digestion--surely if any one may -fairly be called happy in this world, it would be the favoured possessor -of all these good things. And yet Carol, who was all this, and more too, -was pensive as he sat with his newspaper on his knees and stared out of -window. Leaving school is one of the first regrets of a purely -sentimental nature, that boys meet with in life, and it lends a tinge of -romance to existence. To have come to the end of anything, pleasant or -otherwise, is always rather a solemn thing. To fold and lay aside a -period of our life, saying, ‘Whatever comes or goes, _that_ is done with -and cannot return,’ must have a sobering effect, with however high a -courage we turn to meet the untried. People with whom most things go -pretty smoothly are apt to think that the happy time just past is the -happiest of their lives, and indeed I doubt if at any later date a -healthy popular boy is likely to taste such pure joys as during the last -few years of his public-school life. It was the first time that Carol -had ever been in any but the highest spirits at going home to Darley. -Tim, you may be sure, respected his companion’s mood, and made but few -attempts at conversation; the feeling of class distinction between -‘upper division’ and ‘Remove’ was still strong upon him, and kept him -rather constrained. He would have been hardly less at ease with the -Emperor of Russia, had he encountered that autocrat in a first-class -carriage, than with this other boy scarcely older than himself in the -eyes of their elders,--for whom the distances between the various stages -of boyhood get foreshortened and lost, like the distances between the -stars; both are so very far away. But Carol, now he had burst the -trammels of Eton conventionalism, meant to see more of Tim, for whom he -had always entertained a friendly feeling, and as a first step towards -this footing of greater intimacy, invited him to come up and see him -next day, when they would go for a walk together. So the next afternoon, -when the shadows were beginning almost imperceptibly to lengthen, Tim -skipped off, heart elate, for the Court. His way lay through pleasant -shady woods, and past the memorable coppice where the accident had -occurred, nearly six years before, which had first brought him -acquainted with Carol. Much of the old childish Tim lingered in his -nature, round the alien growth of the last two years, and he was seized -with a sudden longing to revisit the scene of their first meeting. He -parted the rods carefully, and stepped into the thicket, finding as -nearly as possible the exact spot where he had sat. Let us leave him -kneeling there, and go before him to the Court, nor seek to pry into -that cool shade of hazel boughs. - -In front of the door at Darley Court--not the state entrance with the -tall flight of steps and the Doric portico, but the little side-door -more generally used--is a stone porch over-grown with clematis and -honeysuckle, and containing two benches. On the afternoon in question it -was pleasantly screened by its festoons of creepers from the western -sun, which blazed hotly on the gravel before it, where two fox-terriers -were lying on their sides enjoying the roasting that is distasteful to -the lords of the creation. The stillness and hush of a hot day had -fallen on the big house, in which nothing seemed alive. The blinds were -pulled down, and an artificial twilight reigned in the darkened rooms. -Even the gray parrot was too lazy to talk. On one of the benches in the -porch, in keeping with the drowsiness around him, Carol was stretched in -an attitude of loose-limbed repose, awaiting his small friend. He made -no effort to read the book in his hand, but was watching with a listless -eye the apparently purposeless gyrations of a pair of white butterflies -that were flitting round the honeysuckle blossoms, the only bit of -active life in all the still picture. They darted and whirled and turned -over and over one another in endless play, only broken now and then by a -moment’s rest with folded wings on some leaf or tendril. One of the dogs -got up and passed round the corner of the house with that slow waddle -which dogs adopt between sleeping and sleeping, as though they were -afraid of waking themselves too thoroughly in the short interval. By and -by the other followed, finding the sun-baked gravel too hot even for -him, and Carol was left alone. He was conscious of a delightful -sensation of relaxation, such as he remembered to have experienced in a -hot bath after a day’s hunting; he had abstracted a big cushion from the -library sofa as he came out, and rammed it into the small of his back. -What wonder that as he watched the sports of the two butterflies he felt -his eyes grow heavy, and the narcotic influence of his surroundings -beginning to tell upon him, he gradually fell asleep. - -For a while the profoundest silence rested on the scene--silence broken -at last by the voices of women coming up the carriage-drive. - -‘I _do_ hope they’ll be at home, mamma; I must rest after this dreadful -walk.’ - -The speaker was a tall slim girl of about sixteen, dressed in cool white -linen. - -‘My dear child,’ says mamma, a no longer blooming, but still pretty -woman, who was swaying a pearl-coloured parasol over her broad gray hat -and draperies of lavender muslin, ‘I have no doubt they will let us sit -down for a little, even if Mrs. Darley is not at home.’ - -‘But suppose she _is_ at home and says she isn’t. Old ladies always go -to sleep on hot afternoons, or take off their caps, or something. Then -if we ask to go in, what will the poor butler do? That would be a -terrible situation. Do you remember when they said “Not at home” at the -Chillworthys’, and papa insisted on seeing the cedars on the lawn, and -there were the whole party having tea? I never shall forget it. I -thought my ears would take a week to get white again; and the footman -had to say he “found his mistress had come back.” She had on thin -morocco shoes and a white dressing-gown, which is not the dress one -usually puts on for walking.’ - -‘Dearest Violet, it was most awkward; don’t refer to it. Perhaps, as you -say, we had better not say anything about resting. I noticed a seat as -we came up the drive; we can sit down there.’ - -‘And have no tea, and be too late for it at home! Oh, mamma, why do we -make calls when the pony’s lame? It is almost indecent to go hot and -dishevelled into people’s drawing-rooms, and with dust on one’s boots.’ - -Violet is going to be a pretty girl; indeed, as she is well aware, she -has already considerable personal attractions: soft brown hair, with red -lights, a little rippled on her temples; brown eyes full of merriment, -shaded by long dark chestnut lashes, and arched by finely pencilled -brows; a very fair skin, flushed now with her hot walk, and slightly -freckled about the small straight nose; and, rarest of all beauties in a -Northern face, a neat pretty mouth and chin. In her white dress and -green ribbons, she is very pleasantly noticeable, as she steps firmly -along beside her languid mother. It is characteristic that it is she who -complains of the heat, though her step is elastic and figure erect, -while her mother, every curve of whose rounded form expresses the last -stage of graceful lassitude, endeavours to show the bright side of the -picture. - -‘It will be much cooler going home, dear; the sun seems to have less -power already; to be sure, we are in shade just here, which may have -something to do with it.’ - -‘Oh! mamma dear, of course it has everything to do with it; why, it is -barely five, and at this time of year the sun doesn’t set till long -after seven, and the lower it gets the more it blazes.’ - -Thus talking they arrived at the porch, which on all but state occasions -served as front door at Darley, and Violet, who was a little ahead, -stopped short on the threshold, and looked back at her mother with a -gleam of fun in her arch eyes. - -‘Why don’t you ring the bell, dear?’ asked that lady. - -‘Come and see,’ replied her daughter. The reason is soon apparent. Just -below the bell the broad back of a youth was resting against the wall; -his arms were crossed and his chin sunk forward on his breast. - -‘Well. Some one is at home anyway,’ whispered the girl, ‘and it is not -only old ladies who go to sleep on hot afternoons, it seems: this must -be “Carol.”’ (By a fine inflection of voice she expressed, maidenly, -that the familiar appellation was meant to be in quotation marks, and -was not used by her on her own account.) ‘What fun!’ - -‘Hush, oh! hush, dear; if he should wake and hear you!’ - -‘Well? it seems the shortest way out of the difficulty,’ retorted -Violet. - -‘How very awkward,’ said the poor lady, resorting to a favourite phrase -of hers. ‘Had we not perhaps better go away, dear?’ - -But against this Violet protested; she had not walked all this way, to -go again without so much as leaving a card; besides (though she only -thought this), she had some curiosity to see what the sleeper would look -like when awake. ‘I shall ring,’ she said. - -‘On no account. Violet! I desire, I insist; _so_ awkward!’ cried her -mother in an imperative whisper, clutching the hand which the girl was -already raising. ‘Perhaps I will. Oh dear! anyway better than you,’ and -she tremblingly extended her own hand across the head of the unconscious -Carol. But at this moment one of the terriers, roused by the sound of -strange voices, looked round the corner and barked, and Carol’s eyes -opened with a start, to find a strange lady with outstretched palm, -apparently in the act of blessing him. It would be hard to say whether -she or Carol blushed the more when, more fully roused to the situation, -he had risen and stood before her. - -‘So awkward,’ she began, from force of habit; and then feeling that this -was not at all what might be expected of her, she continued, ‘Mr. Carol -Darley, I suppose--heard of you from Mrs. Darley--going to try and find -her at home--only lately come to live in the neighbourhood--must -introduce myself--Mrs. Markham Willis; my daughter, Miss Markham -Willis’; and Mr. Carol made a fine bow to the young lady, of whose -presence he now first became aware. - -Mrs. Darley was produced presently from some mysterious seclusion, where -she had probably been occupied much as Miss Violet had irreverently -supposed. Carol’s grandmother was a little pink-and-white old lady, with -prim sausage curls of the softest flossy white hair on her forehead. She -wore beautiful caps, trimmed with wonderful brocaded ribbon, and a great -quantity of minute old-fashioned lockets and brooches. - -‘I see you have made acquaintance with our boy,’ she said. ‘Carol dear, -tell your Aunt Kate that Mrs. Wallis is here.’ - -She had never got her husband’s name right till they had been married a -year, and so, as the Squire used to say when he teased her, could not be -expected to remember other people’s, but she brought out the mangled -words with such a winning graciousness and such an entire belief in -herself, that no one thought of being offended, or even surprised. She -had called Mr. Ebbesley ‘Eversley,’ ‘Etherington,’ and ‘Ebbrington’ -within the first half-hour of their acquaintance, and Tim was either -‘Jim’ or ‘Tom,’ as it happened. - -‘How kind of you to come and see me such a hot afternoon,’ she went on. -‘You must be tired to death. You must have some tea. Kate, dear,’ as -Carol reappeared with his aunt, ‘never mind saying how-d’ye-do. Mrs. -Williams will excuse you, I know, while you tell them to get her some -tea as soon as possible; it will be better than ceremony this hot -weather; and, Kate, some of the little ginger-bread cakes. You are not -too old to like cake, dear,’ laying a kind old hand on Violet. ‘As for -Carol, he can’t have enough of them; that boy will eat me out of house -and home.’ - -‘Yes; you must eat our ginger-bread,’ said Carol, laughing. ‘Grandmamma -has a wonderful recipe that has come down through generations of -grandmammas, till it has caught quite a smell of hot ginger-bread.’ - -The tea was not long in making its appearance; it was good at the Court, -like everything else, and was drunk out of little old Worcester cups, -which the present occupant keeps in a tall cabinet, but which were then -used every day. - -Mrs. Markham Willis, who was one of the earliest victims of the now -raging china mania, was in ecstasies over the cups, and wanted to know -their date and history and all about them; indeed, if her daughter had -not stopped her, she would have turned hers upside down to look at the -mark, regardless of consequences; as it was, she held it high and tried -to peep underneath it. - -‘My father-in-law gave them to us; they were his mother’s,’ said Mrs. -Darley; ‘the year after our marriage it was, 1817. I remember because of -Princess Charlotte’s death, and we all had to wear mourning; but you are -too young to remember, my dear’ (she called every one ‘my dear’). And as -Mrs. Markham Willis had been born some ten years after that sad event, -there was no gainsaying the truth of the old lady’s statement. - -Carol meanwhile was making himself agreeable to Violet, and by the time -Tim arrived for the promised walk, they were getting on very comfortably -together, considering their uncomfortable ages and still more -uncomfortable manner of introduction. So much so, indeed, that Violet -was not altogether pleased with the interruption. And any girl might be -excused for liking to talk to Carol; he was so big and handsome, so easy -and yet so unassuming in manner, that she wished her father could afford -to send her brothers to Eton, if this was a specimen of the productions -of that school. - -They were not a large party, and three out of the five were already -known to Tim, but the impression conveyed to him when the door was -opened for his entrance, was that of a large company of strangers -engaged in animated conversation. Tim’s experience of female society was -derived principally from that of Mrs. Quitchett, and he was not at home -with ladies; he had an uncomfortable feeling that women would despise -him for being small for his age and weak, having gathered from his -varied reading the idea that they liked in the opposite sex such -qualities as were most of a contrast to themselves. Like most people who -have seen very few of their fellow-creatures, he was absurdly -self-conscious, and the eight feminine eyes turned upon him as he -entered the drawing-room exercised a most bewildering effect on him. -Carol came to his rescue with quick kindliness, taking him by the hand -and introducing him to the two strangers. - -‘It is _so_ pleasant to see so many young people about one,’ said Mrs. -Markham Willis graciously, which threw poor Tim into yet fresh -agitation, as he was painfully aware that he was not at all what was -expected in a young person, and feared that if Mrs. Markham Willis -really did like young people about her, and thought that she had found -one in him, she would be disappointed. It is such a common form of -egoism in children, and one not perhaps altogether unknown to older -people, thus to exaggerate the importance of their relation to others, -who have most likely never thought at all about them. - -‘Is Mr. Heatherly at home now?’ asked Mrs. Darley sweetly. - -‘“Ebbesley,” mamma,’ said Miss Kate. - -‘Well, dear, I said so,’ returned her mother, quite unruffled, adding -sweetly to Tim, ‘We see so little of him here.’ - -‘He is expected to-morrow,’ answered the boy, who was occupied in -balancing his cup, which would slide ominously about the flat saucer, -and trying not to crumb his ginger-bread on the carpet. ‘He wrote to me -that he couldn’t get back before; he is a good deal away; I am to meet -him at Granthurst.’ The cup made a sudden excursion to the very edge of -the saucer, and Tim just saved it, turning hot and cold at once at the -thought of what might have happened. After this, he refused any more -with what was almost a shudder, and Mrs. Markham Willis, who had been -pensively regarding the company with her head on one side, remarked, ‘I -am afraid we really _must_ go,’ as if it were the outcome of a long -conversation, in which all the others had been pressing her to stay. In -the confusion of hunting for the pearl-coloured parasol, which she had -herself put behind her on sitting down, Carol whispered to Tim, ‘You -won’t mind our walk being a little cut down, old fellow. I must see -these people home, but you will come with us, and we can have a little -turn after we’ve left them.’ What could Tim say but, ‘Oh yes, just as -you like’? And so Carol offered his services as an escort, and the four -set out together. - -‘I don’t think Mrs. Wilkes a very interesting woman, dear,’ said Mrs. -Darley to her daughter when the visitors were gone. ‘She doesn’t seem to -me to care much for anything but cups and saucers; she asked me why I -didn’t put these on the cabinet instead of those pretty vases your -father bought last time we were in London; and it is so tiresome of -people to have two names. Now I can generally remember one, but two is -too much.’ - -Miss Kate smiled, and turned the conversation to Violet’s beauty; on -which subject Master Carol also descanted a little later, when, having -deposited the young lady and her mamma at their own door, the two lads -were going slowly across the fields to the old manor-house. The sun -slanting slowly westwards made their shadows long upon the grass as they -walked. Bess and Carol’s terriers trotted on before them, the former -slowly lurching in a slightly sidelong manner, but with infinite dignity -as became her years, the two smaller dogs jumping hither and thither, -and poking their inquisitive noses into every hole in the hedge. - -‘Don’t you think,’ Carol was saying, ‘that that Miss Markham Willis is a -very pretty girl?’ - -‘Well, really,’ answered Tim, ‘I daresay she is. Do you know, I don’t -think I thought much about it; I noticed she had a very nice white -dress, but I didn’t see much of her face; it was rather dark in the -drawing-room, and going home you and she were walking on ahead, so that -I only saw her back.’ - -‘Here, Nip; here, Scamp, you little beasts! come out of that!’ called -Carol, and added pensively, ‘Yes, she is pretty; at least I think she -_will_ be,’ with the calm superiority of a man of the world. - -‘Why, how old do you suppose she is, then?’ - -‘She’s sixteen, she told me--quite a child; though when she comes out -next year she will treat me as a mere boy, and think herself far above -me. Did you see the score Potts made for Kent the other day? Odd he -should have made duck at Lords.’ - -So the conversation drifted off to cricket, in which, as in how many -other things, Tim took a profound interest as long as Carol talked of -them. - -After a time the talk fell on school matters. Carol, like most boys who -have lately left, was full of anecdotes of what had happened ‘up to’ -this master and that; how Smith major once showed up the same pœna, a -hundred lines of Virgil, three times to a short-sighted and -long-suffering instructor, once for an _Æneid_, once for “write out and -translate the lesson,” and once for a book of _Paradise Lost_; with many -other such edifying details, to all of which winged words his steadfast -admirer lent a greedy ear. From such stories as these, they passed to -more personal reminiscences, and Tim was forced to confess that his -early life at Eton had not been altogether a bed of roses. - -‘I was rather a brute not to see more of you there,’ said Carol, ‘but -then boys _are_ brutes.’ - -Oh, high new standpoint from which to look back and speak of ‘boys’! - -‘Indeed, indeed, I did not think so, Darley--Carol, I mean; you were as -good as possible to me; you could not do more; you had all your friends -before I came, and you were so much higher up, and----’ - -‘You’re a good little soul, Tim,’ Carol interrupted, ‘and believe in -every one; you’d make excuses for a man who robbed and murdered you.’ - -‘But you never robbed and murdered me,’ the little boy answered, -venturing to be facetious for the first time. ‘I am sure you did all you -could, and took me for your fag and everything. I’m glad I shall be in -Fifth Form next half, for I should never get used to fagging for any one -else.’ - -‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ said the other deprecatingly, ‘but anyway -now we are Carol and Tim again, and no longer upper division and lower -boy; I hope we may be friends. You will have to write me full accounts -of the old place; most of my friends have left, so if you don’t I shall -never hear anything. Mind you tell me what new boys there are at my -tutor’s next half, and if any of ’em can play football, and what new -choices Harcourt gives their colours to, and who are likely to give us -trouble for the cup.’ - -‘How funnily it all came about, Carol,’ said Tim modestly, after -promising faithfully to comply with all these injunctions,--‘my having -you for a friend, I mean. One would have thought I was the last person -you would ever have noticed. I can’t play football, or anything you -like; indeed, I’m no good at any games.’ - -‘You give me a good character,’ answered his friend, laughing, ‘to -suppose me the brutal athlete who selects his friends by their muscle; -you don’t give me much credit, it seems, for intellectual tastes. -Seriously though,’ he added, looking down at him kindly, ‘you are a -first-rate little friend, and will be my link with the dear old place.’ - -Tim was silent, feeling very grateful and happy. - -‘I hope nothing will ever break our friendship,’ he said presently. - -‘Oh! nothing ever will,’ replied the other airily; ‘at least it will be -your fault if it does.’ - -Would it be his fault? Tim smiled at the idea. Would he ever be the one -to cast aside what he most valued in all the world? He dwelt upon the -thought with some amusement; it seemed too absurd even for protest. -Could any one have foretold to us last year eight out of ten of the -things that have befallen us in this, how we should have laughed at -them! Still, though Tim laughed, one thought seemed to oppress him even -in his mirth; it was an odd feeling too indefinite to be called an -apprehension, and it had its root and origin in Violet. She was the -first young girl he had ever seen placed in juxtaposition to Carol, and -the sight of the two together, and his friend’s chance remarks upon her -beauty, had opened up quite a new vista of possibilities to him. We may -laugh at the notion of any one forecasting results from the meeting of a -lad of eighteen and a girl of Violet’s age, but we must remember the -augur himself was but fourteen, and that to him these other two seemed -almost more than grown up. He had come to look on Carol as crowned with -all fulfilment, a being to whom no future years could add any power or -maturity, and Violet was tall and self-possessed enough for twenty; her -position as the eldest of a large family had made her old for her age. -All the complications of love and romance, never hitherto included in -any of Tim’s views of the future, started into threatening being for the -first time, the more alarming for their vagueness; they seemed to cast -quite a new light upon his favourite text, as he repeated it to himself -on his knees after his prayers that night, as his habit was. ‘Passing -the love of woman.’ ‘The love of woman’; he had never thought of it that -way before. He had supposed it meant mother’s love, sister’s love, all -the good things he had never known, poor child; and could only imagine -the love of women generally as being gentler and more loving than men. -Would Carol ever be what the books called ‘in love’? ever marry? and in -this remote and awful contingency could they stay close friends, or had -he been assured that day for the first time in words of the friendship -he most coveted, only to see it melt from his grasp as he claimed it? In -vain he asked these questions of his own heart. Of course, he told -himself, some day it was sure to happen; he was a fool not to have -thought of it before. But what were the words? ‘_Passing_,’ yes, -‘_passing_ the love of woman,’--that part at least he could always keep -true. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - - A little sorrow, a little pleasure, - Fate metes us from the dusty measure - That holds the date of all of us: - We are born with travail and strong crying, - And from the birthday to the dying - The likeness of our life is thus. - - SWINBURNE’S _Ilicet_. - - -‘You might come up to-morrow afternoon, if you cared,’ Carol had said as -they parted, ‘and then we could go round by the old mill, as I meant to -do to-day, and you would see the new cart-road grandfather is making in -the wood.’ - -And who so ready as Tim! Only, he doubted if his father would get back -in time for him to get to the Court after he had been to Granthurst to -fetch him. Would Carol leave it open? And Carol had said, ‘All right, -old fellow; I shan’t expect you till I see you’; on which understanding -they had parted, Tim standing to watch the tall active figure striding -away from the open door of the manor-house, calling his dogs after him. - -‘He’s a fine growed lad, that young Darley,’ remarked Mrs. Quitchett, -who had come out to welcome her nursling; ‘do you remember the day, -Master Tim dear, when he came with the grapes, the first time ever he -come here?’ - -‘Remember? Oh, nurse,’ cried Tim (he always called the old lady -‘nurse’), ‘he’s the noblest, finest fellow going, and I love him better -than anybody in the world--except you, dear,’ he added quickly, putting -his arms about her as he saw a quick look of pain cross her face; and -then, what was it? a prick of conscience perhaps that made him add lower -and more thoughtfully, with just a shade of doubt in his tone, ‘and -father.’ - -Was it true that he loved his father better than Carol? The question -had never before suggested itself to him in that crude form. What was -the criterion of loving? He did not know; he had no signs to go by. He -had assumed, as children do, that of course he loved his father; good -people always love their parents. It was only that vague indefinite -class of ‘the wicked,’ which he heard denounced on Sunday, and to which -it never occurs to a child that he or any of his immediate surroundings -can possibly belong, who did not love their parents. But now he felt in -his inmost being that his affection for his father was _not_ as strong -as that for his friend,--was not, indeed, of the same sort at all, and -he took shame to himself for the discovery. Many of us live thus for -years, allowing our hearts to act for us, and never asking ourselves -needless psychological questions; and then suddenly comes a time when we -seem to start up uncomfortably active and alert, new possibilities open -out around us, and questionings of our feelings suggest themselves -which plead, importunate, for answers. Nor can we make a greater -mistake than in supposing that such turns in their lives come only to -men and women. To a boy of Tim’s organisation, fourteen is an age quite -ripe for crises. - -Violet crosses his path, erect, slim, and hazel-eyed, and in a moment he -seems to understand all possible complications of love and courtship -between her and Carol. He makes a chance little gush to his old nurse, -and lo! conscience awaking, proceeds to inquire with uncomfortable -pertinacity into his relations with his father. When one considers how -those who have delicate consciences like our hero, suffer and writhe, -and run round and round, and drive their stings into their own brains, -one is tempted to ask as the best gift for one’s dearest, a fine tough -insensibility, a happy bluntness of the moral sense. I suppose the -moralists would tell us to keep our account with the stern goddess as -clean as possible, to put into her hands no weapon for our torment; but -which of us can truly boast of such a course as that? And besides, does -not experience daily teach us that it is precisely the most blameless -among us she selects for her favourite victims? - -Tim, as he sat over the book he did not read that night, as he drove -over to Granthurst in the trap next day, could not help asking himself, -‘What have I ever done for father, who has done so much for me? What -have I ever given up for him? He tried to answer that no boys of his age -can do anything for their parents; it is a matter of course that they -accept what they get, ‘Ah! but,’ says conscience, ‘_they_ love their -fathers.’ And though he dared not put it into words even to himself, the -thought was ever present, though formless as yet within him, that he did -_not_ love his father. - -Poor Mr. Ebbesley! no one _did_ love him that I know of; no one ever -had. He was not made to attract love, and yet if his heart was not -breaking for it (not being of a breaking sort), it had hardened and -withered and dried up for want of it. - -To have longed for love all one’s life, to have sought it with care and -constantly missed it, is as sad a fate as can well be imposed on a man, -and is not calculated to sweeten the temper. - -Looking back over William Ebbesley’s life, the wonder is that he had not -turned out a social pariah and enemy of his race. There must have been -an immense moral rectitude about him that kept him true to what he -believed to be his duty to his neighbour. - -Early left an orphan by poor and improvident parents, he had been -educated by the grudging charity of people with a family to provide for, -and sent abroad at an age when many boys have not left school, to push -his own fortunes. Uncheered, uncared-for, he had fought his way through -twenty hard years, if not to riches, to what thirty years ago was -considered a very decent competence, and had returned to England to fall -a prey to one of those absorbing passions for a beautiful and penniless -girl many years younger than himself, which are so often the fate of men -verging on middle age, in whose earlier youth there has been no room for -romance. On her he had lavished all the wealth of love that had for -years accumulated in his lonely heart. I would dwell as lightly as -possible on the painful and bitter episode of his short married life; of -the way it ended I have already given a hint in an earlier chapter of -this story. Just where he had placed all his hopes of happiness, the -bitterest shame and sorrow of his life had lain in wait for him. - -Many men would have been utterly crushed by such an end of all that they -had longed and worked for, and laid down their arms in the unequal -struggle with fate. But Ebbesley, half ruined by the extravagance of the -woman he had loved, wounded to the heart by her cruelty, and humiliated -in every fibre of his proud nature by her unfaithfulness, had yet one -link that bound him to the world, one thing left to work for. It was -such a fragile thread, the poor little year-old baby, by which to hang -on to affection and grace and the beauty of life, but it was his all, -and he grasped it despairingly. For the baby’s sake he had gone -uncomplainingly back to years more of the banishment he had thought -ended, and the labour he believed accomplished, even separating himself -from the child for the child’s good. We have seen how he dwelt in secret -on what his son was to look like, and be like; how often in his own mind -he had foreseen the manner of their meeting; and how, when the time was -come, he had chafed at every delay, counting trains and steamboats but -crawling snails compared to the wings of love that were bearing him back -to his little one. And we have seen too what awaited him at home. If I -have wearied my reader with insisting on the barrenness of this man’s -life, it is because I am full of pity for him, and would not have him -judged too hardly, if in what follows he seems unkind to his son. - -Tim arrived at Granthurst in a chastened frame of mind, and endeavoured -to blot himself out of the gaze of the few unemployed people always -waiting about a station, who seized on him as lawful prey, and stared as -though with a view to his identification on the morrow before a jury of -their fellow-citizens. From this scrutiny, which was peculiarly trying -and distasteful to him, he was shortly delivered by the arrival of a hot -dog, who was brought in resisting violently and tied to a post, and upon -whom all the interest of the unoccupied population, for a moment -directed at him, fastened itself with avidity, leaving Tim once more to -his compunctions. The first outcome of his meditations was an unusual -infusion of tenderness and spontaneity in the greeting kiss he bestowed -upon his father, when in due course the train brought up beside the -platform, and Mr. Ebbesley descended, bending a cindery whisker towards -the fresh young lips. - -As they were mounting into their conveyance, and the aggressive -whiteness of the ‘W. E.,’ which from the side of his black bag thrust -its owner’s personality on a reluctant public, was being eclipsed under -the seat, a new anxiety suggested itself to Tim, which his previous -train of thought had for the time kept under. Mindful of Carol’s -invitation, he consulted his watch, and found that his power to avail -himself of it would depend upon whether Mr. Ebbesley had any business in -Granthurst, or meant to return at once to Stoke Ashton; timidly, but -with a manner of studied unconcern, he asked the question, and to his -delight his father answered that he was going straight home. It seemed -as though his mind in its rebound, as this weight was lifted off it, -scattered the doubts and fears that had oppressed it all the morning, -and he felt light of heart, and inclined to chatter as the carriage -rolled on its way over breezy commons, or plunged into deep shady -lanes. In the days when Tim was a schoolboy August was still a hot -month, and the warm sun called an unusual glow into his cheek at the -edge of the shadow cast by his straw hat with its pretty ribbon. - -‘Eton has certainly improved him,’ thought Mr. Ebbesley, looking at him -half critically; ‘he has lost his whipped-dog expression,’ and he smiled -approvingly at his son, saying with frosty geniality, ‘You must tell me -all about last half; how have you been doing at school?’ - -‘Oh! it has been a very jolly half, and I have hardly stayed out at all, -although it was so hot. I wrote you that I took 13th in trials. Tommy -Weston said it was an unlucky number, but I told him he would not have -thought so if he had been there in the list instead of 25th.’ - -‘And who is Tommy Weston?’ asked Mr. Ebbesley, feeling quite friendly -towards this other man’s son who had done less well than his own. - -‘Tommy isn’t his real name, you know,’ explained Tim; ‘he’s a fellow at -m’-tutor’s, and the other fellows call him Tommy; he’s been very jolly -to me, and, indeed, I get on better with all the fellows than I did at -first. And I’ve “passed,” which means, don’t you know, that I can swim, -and may go on the river, and I _think_,’ rather doubtfully, ‘I’m -beginning to like cricket a little.’ - -‘That’s a good thing,’ said his father judicially; ‘it is always well in -life to like what other people like; eccentricity always brings -unhappiness.’ - -Tim glowed and expanded with the pleasant sense of having done the right -thing; it was such a new and strange sensation. ‘And I’ve grown,’ he -said exultingly; ‘I’m two inches taller than I was in the spring.’ - -‘Capital,’ said Mr. Ebbesley, almost with enthusiasm; and he thought, -‘It is not always the boys who grow young who turn out the finest men in -the end.’ ‘And your tutor?’ he asked; ‘I hope he is satisfied with -you.’ - -‘Oh! m’-tutor’s been awfully good to me; he always is; he took me to -Burnham Beeches the other day, and we had a delightful afternoon, and -he’s promised to give me a good report. I was 5th in collections, and if -I had been 3d I should have got a prize; so tutor said he would give me -a little book anyway, and he wrote “to console” in it, because he said -it was hard luck on me being just out of it, and I had worked very well -all the half. Wasn’t it kind of him?’ - -In his heart Mr. Ebbesley thought it was a foolish indulgence, but he -was feeling so amiably towards his son just then that he let it pass -without comment. Indeed, he seemed altogether in so gracious a mood as -he sat listening with a grave smile to all that he was told, though he -did not say much, that Tim was presently encouraged, rambling from one -subject to another, to speak of Carol. He had never felt so near to his -father before, so able to talk freely to him of what was in his heart. -Ordinarily he did not say much about his friend; his father never seemed -to be pleased at his affection for him. To tell the truth, the poor man -had not forgiven Carol the awkwardness of their first meeting, and the -innocent part he had borne in the disappointment of all his most -cherished expectations. And it was not enough that this boy who was not -his, by keeping before his eyes the perfect realisation of all that he -had desired in his own son, seemed always to mock him; but he must needs -come between him and that son, such as he was, and steal the affections -that were his by every right, and add to the wealth of love lavished on -him by his own kinsfolk. Truly, ‘to him that hath shall be given, and -from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.’ It -was by a law as natural as that of gravitation that the ewe-lamb was -added to the flocks and herds of the rich man, and the wonder is that -Nathan should have seen anything odd in the arrangement. Still this is a -hard saying, and a view of matters that has seemed unjust to generations -of men, from the prophet down to William Ebbesley, who certainly needed -and would have appreciated a little affection far more than the -fortunate Carol. In fact, he was jealous; and strange as it may seem -that a father should be jealous of his son’s friends, it is by no means -so rare a thing as might be supposed. No parent can help a certain -humiliation and annoyance at the thought of a child’s undoubted -preference of another to himself. Many people under these circumstances -make the grievous mistake of trying to separate their sons from the -objects of their jealousy, but in no case is this treatment successful. -Some lads turn sulky under it, and nurse bitter feelings in secret, -while others break out into open defiance and rebellion, when all sorts -of trouble ensue. Of course the parents do not admit for a moment that -it is jealousy that prompts their course; there are always admirable -reasons why the objectionable person is not a good friend for their -offspring. Mr. Ebbesley would probably have repudiated with scorn the -idea of his being jealous of Tim’s affection for Carol Darley, but it -galled and irritated him none the less; until he had come to entertain -such a hearty dislike of his young neighbour as he would have been slow -to acknowledge even to himself. He did not consider how little pains he -had taken to secure the gift which he grudged to another; in his own way -he loved his son strongly, but not having found him such as he had -hoped, he could not give him that approving affection which alone -conveys the _idea_ of love to a child’s mind. All the same, it did not -strike him as anything less than reasonable to expect that the boy -should be intuitively aware of this hidden love of his, and respond to -it as warmly as though it were expressed. He knew he had the feeling, -but did not reflect that he never showed it. And though Tim was as far -from guessing his father’s real sentiments with regard to his friend as -he was from divining his love for himself, he felt instinctively, though -dimly, that the subject of Carol was not a welcome one to Mr. Ebbesley, -and that he would therefore do well, without actually disguising the -fact of his intimacy with him, to see him quietly, and talk of him as -little as possible. And this was not a difficult course to pursue, as -Mr. Ebbesley rarely encouraged much conversation from him on any -subject, and still more rarely made any inquiries as to where, how, or -with whom he spent his time when they were apart. - -But on this particular afternoon he seemed, as I have said, so kind, and -Tim was feeling so warmly towards him, and everything was working so -well towards the gratification of his wish to be off to the Court in -time for the promised walk, that he said in the lightness of his heart, -‘I am glad you had no business in Granthurst, father.’ - -‘Why so?’ asked his father, wondering in his own mind if he were going -to suggest their doing anything together, and determined beforehand to -accede to any such proposition, even though he had to put off looking -over the law-papers he had brought down with him till the next day. - -‘Well, you see, I was to have gone a walk with Carol Darley yesterday, -but there were people calling at the Court, and he had to go back with -them, so we couldn’t have our walk. And he said we might go this -afternoon, but I wasn’t sure if I should be back in time; if you’d had -to stay in Granthurst it would have made it too late. So we left it -open. It was to depend on that. That’s why I wanted to know if you were -coming straight home. I’m awfully glad.’ - -It was one of Mr. Ebbesley’s idiosyncrasies that he always paused before -answering any one just long enough to make his interlocutor feel -awkwardly uncertain whether he had heard or not; so that Tim, who was -accustomed to his ways, was not for a moment or two surprised at his -silence. - -When he did speak it was to say slowly, and in a voice from which all -traces either of affection or resentment were equally removed---- - -‘You say you were at Darley Court yesterday; am I to understand that you -wish to go there again to-day?’ - -Tim looked up quickly, and was startled at the hard expression on his -father’s face. - -‘Yes,’ he stammered; ‘I thought, I meant----’ - -‘I think you will be in the way,’ Mr. Ebbesley continued, in the same -measured tones. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Darley cannot want you perpetually about -the house.’ - -‘But most likely I should not see any of them,’ Tim protested eagerly. -‘I am only going to see Carol; it was quite by accident that he happened -to be in the drawing-room yesterday when I went.’ - -‘I should think he too could exist without seeing you _every_ day,’ said -his father sharply, and then relapsing into stateliness, he added, ‘I -disapprove of such violent intimacies, especially with people with whom -I am not intimate myself.’ - -It flashed across Tim that if his intimacies were to be regulated by his -father’s, their number would indeed be limited. But he swallowed this -repartee and made one despairing effort. ‘But he _asked_ me to come, and -I said I would. I will not go again if you don’t like me to----’ - -‘I desire,’ said Mr. Ebbesley, in a way that put an end to all further -discussion of the subject, ‘that you will not go to the Court this -afternoon. That is enough.’ - -No word of _why_ he wanted him to stay at the manor-house, of regret -that he should wish to leave him on the first afternoon that they were -together after so long a separation; he was too proud to show his own -child how much he needed his affection. Nothing could be farther from -Tim’s imagination than that his father should wish to keep him near -himself, or have any desire for his company. Probably one indication of -a human motive, even a jealous or selfish one, that had its root in -love, would have brought them closer together than anything had ever -done yet, but it was foreign to William Ebbesley’s nature to make such a -sign; he believed himself to be actuated by entirely impersonal -considerations, or at least he wished to believe so, and was determined -that his son should, whether he did or not. So Tim’s flutterings of love -and joy born of a summer’s morning were chilled back upon his heart, and -he sat in silence for the rest of the drive sore and resentful, and -escaped as soon as they reached home to cry in his own room alone with -Bess. Carol, concluding that he had not got back in time, visited the -old mill and the new cart-road by himself, whistling as he went. - -This was Mr. Ebbesley’s first act of open hostility to the friendship -between the lads, and it was the beginning of much pain and -heart-burning to Tim, serving to widen the distance between him and his -father considerably. - - - - -CHAPTER X - - Oh let the solid ground - Not fail beneath my feet - Before my life has found - What some have found so sweet. - - TENNYSON’S _Maud_. - - -Tim’s career at Eton, after it became more prosperous, offers nothing of -much interest to the general public, his relations with the various good -people who befriended him having nothing to do with this story, which is -the history of his friendship for Carol, and for no one else. We must -not suppose, however, that he had no other friends. He was not of the -very successful type, but he made several very fast and true ones at -this period of his life. His tutor was very fond of him, and more than -one boy among his schoolfellows asked him to visit him in the holidays, -which is the highest mark of esteem that young gentlemen at that age can -confer. His father would have liked him to go, but Tim would accept none -of these invitations, feeling how unlike the homes his friends described -to him--abodes of mothers and sisters and ponies, and such good -things--were to the lonely old manor-house, and not caring to invite -their inspection of his own interior in return. Still he felt the -kindness of the intention, and was as placidly contented as he could be -in a place where Carol had been, and was not; for in spite of new ties -and interests, above and below all other friendships or affections, his -life-devotion held its undiminished sway. He corresponded regularly with -Carol, according to his promise, telling him all the gossip of the old -place, so interesting to those who have grown up in that queer nursery, -so inscrutably dull to all besides. Many a detail of cricket or fives -news was mastered by the indefatigable Tim, though he took but a -slender concern in such matters on his own account, because he knew they -would be of interest to Carol, who on his side declared our hero the -best of correspondents, and supplied him in return with descriptions of -Cambridge, or, if at Darley, with constant bulletins of the health of -Bess. - -‘Bess is renewing her youth,’ he would write; ‘there is not a rabbit but -goes in fear for his life in all Stoke Ashton parish. Mrs. Quitchett -seems to have borrowed the other old lady’s receipt, not for -rabbit-hunting, but for looking young. In your absence, she hails me -with pleasure, as some one to whom to talk of you.’ - -Or from Cambridge: ‘Do you want to know what I am about? I walk a great -deal--to stretch my legs, which you may think do not require it--not to -see the country, which a fellow here, who never said anything else good -that I know of, said one could do by putting on a pair of high-heeled -boots. I read a fairish amount, and play lots of tennis. Do you know -what a bisque is? or that half thirty is not the same as fifteen? In the -evenings I have taken violently to whist, and have once or twice -ventured on more exciting games, but don’t feel inclined to become a -professional gambler yet awhile. Next winter I think I shall keep a -horse. It isn’t half a bad life, and there are lots of awfully jolly -fellows; but I miss the old school more than I can say, and am still -more than half inclined to blub when I think of it. What shall I do next -half without Upper Club? I don’t believe playing for the University will -at all console me.’ - -Not very deep perhaps, but frank, boyish, jolly letters, with a -sensation as of fresh air blowing through them. I have a pile of them -from which I could quote, all much in the same style. Years afterwards -they were found, oh! how carefully preserved, and tied together in -little bundles, with now only the date of their receipt, now some tender -comment carefully affixed in Tim’s youthful scrawl. The neatness of -their arrangement had something specially touching about it, tidiness -not being as a general rule by any means a distinguishing characteristic -of their recipient. - -As may readily be imagined, Tim’s persistence in his intimacy with Carol -did not tend to increase the comfort of his relations with his father. -Mr. Ebbesley was not a man of many words; but neither was it difficult -to see of what he disapproved, and in the present case, without parading -his sentiments, he took no pains to conceal them. During the autumn and -winter that followed the conversation recorded in the last chapter he -confined himself to little sneers and sarcasms when Carol’s name -happened to be mentioned in his presence, which Tim took care should be -as seldom as possible. But the very carefulness of this avoidance was in -itself a cause of constraint. How could the boy be at ease with his -father when all his most sacred feelings clustered round an object of -which he felt it better never to speak to him? To live in tacit defiance -of an unexpressed desire of one’s nearest relative does not conduce to a -comfortable state of things. - -It was in the first Easter holidays after the August day when Fate, in -the shape of Miss Markham Willis, had first crossed the path of the two -friends, that, Carol having gone back to Cambridge before Tim’s return -to Eton, the latter was one day diligently scribbling his budget of home -news in the old manor library where he had lain asleep the day his -father’s letter had come to Mrs. Quitchett. (What the news was I am not -in a position to tell you, because, you see, though I can refer to every -line Carol wrote to Tim, I have not the same advantage as regards Tim’s -answers.) So immersed was he in his writing, and in the mental effort of -omitting nothing Carol would like to be told, that he did not hear the -door open, nor observe that any one had come in, till he was startled -by a shadow falling on the paper, and looking up, was somewhat alarmed -to find his father standing before him with an expression which was -anything rather than amiable. Mr. Ebbesley had been vexed about -something, and was in a mood for finding fault. - -‘Always scribbling,’ he began; ‘it’s really a sin not to be out this -lovely day.’ - -He was not as a rule keenly susceptible to the beauty of the weather, -and his remark therefore rather surprised his son. - -‘I was out all the morning,’ he said. - -‘Where?’ asked his father. - -‘Oh! up above Beech Farm, in the Court woods,’ and Tim blushed a little -as he spoke. The fact was he had been making one of his pilgrimages to -the sacred spot where his dinner with the squirrel had been interrupted -so many years before. - -‘In the Court woods,’ repeated Mr. Ebbesley crossly; ‘really I’m ashamed -of you. Not content with dangling eternally about after that -turnip-eating young embryo squire the whole time he’s here, you must -needs make yourself ridiculous by hanging about his house and grounds -like a sentimental girl when he’s away.’ - -‘You shan’t call Carol names,’ Tim answered hotly, the faint blood in -his cheeks suddenly crimsoning them all over; ‘he’s the best and---- -There, I beg your pardon; I know I oughtn’t to speak so to you, but I -couldn’t help it. Say what you like about me, but please don’t sneer at -him.’ - -‘I am sure he would be delighted if he knew what a champion he had in -you; don’t you see that the fellow doesn’t want you? You _must_ bore -him.’ - -‘You’ve no right to say he doesn’t want me,’ the boy flashed out again; -‘it’s not true; and--and--I think he’s the best judge of whether he -wants me or not.’ - -He was quivering all over, but his father took no more notice of this -outbreak than of the former one. - -‘I’ve no doubt,’ he went on, motioning slightly towards the unfinished -letter, ‘that it’s to him you’ve been writing all this trash. It seems -to me that you waste a good deal of your time and my paper in supplying -pipe-lighters for unknown undergraduates.’ - -‘What is it you want me to do?’ asked Tim hopelessly. - -‘You know quite well what my wishes are: that I disapprove of violent -intimacies and long letter-writing. Why can’t you be friends with this -very commonplace young man as other people are friends, without all this -foolish fuss? I don’t want you to waste all your time in writing -sentimental letters; it is enervating; and Heaven knows you don’t -require _that_.’ - -Tim stood white and uncertain, biting his pen. ‘You want me to give -Carol up,’ he said. - -‘That is so like you,’ said Mr. Ebbesley; ‘you make such a tragedy of -everything; who talks of giving up? I only ask you for once to show a -little common sense, and not eternally to go on being a baby. Why can -you never be like other boys about anything, I wonder?’ - -Tim wondered that too; he also wondered whether it would be worth while -to try and make his father understand that his letters were not -‘sentimental,’ as he called them. For a minute he half felt inclined to -ask him to read the one on the table between them, but he recollected -all sorts of little simple sayings and phrases that he would not for the -world submit to the sarcastic perusal of his father’s double eyeglass. -_He_ knew perfectly well that to continue on terms of cool acquaintance -with Carol, always guarding every word and action for fear it was too -intimate, and not writing to him after promising to do so, was simply -impossible; but he knew too that it was hopeless to make his father see -this as he saw it. No. What he meant him to do was simply to give up his -friend, and he felt a dull feeling of anger and defiance at what he -considered his disingenuous way of putting himself more or less in the -right by all this talk about ‘common sense’ and ‘ordinary friendship.’ -He determined to call things by their right names, and since his father -did not like his speaking of what he required of him as ‘giving up -Carol,’ he would do it again. - -‘I am sorry I cannot obey you,’ he said slowly; ‘I think one should -never give up a friend unless for his own good.’ - -‘Oh! in that case you think you should?’ inquired his father, with an -ironical appearance of interest. - -‘Yes; if one loved a person truly, one would do anything for him; even -give him up,’ answered Tim quite simply. - -Mr. Ebbesley fairly lost patience. ‘Don’t you know I could _make_ you do -this if I chose?’ he said almost fiercely; perhaps the words ‘if one -loved a person truly’ had galled his wound a little. But he relapsed -into his manner of carefully assumed indifference to add, ‘I prefer, -however, to leave you free to find out that I am right by experience; I -have warned you, and you will not be warned; you know my wishes, but -since you refuse to be guided by them you shall please yourself.’ And he -turned and left the room. - -Tim stood with the unfinished letter in his hand staring blankly after -him. Why was the only thing his father had ever asked of him the only -thing he could not do? He sank back into his chair and covered his face -with the letter. ‘Oh! Carol,’ he moaned, ‘will you cast me off some day -after this?’ - -It would be hard to say whether father or son suffered more keenly after -this interview. Tim, to be sure, had carried his point, but his laurels -were dear bought, and some victories, as we know, are almost more -disastrous than defeats; and then Mr. Ebbesley had the pleasant -certainty that he was right, which was his consolation in many of the -hard knocks of life. He sincerely believed himself actuated by none but -the very highest motives, and, moreover, considered that he had -displayed remarkable temper and moderation under very trying -circumstances. None the less he had been defied and bested, refused what -he had almost stooped to ask, and had flat disobedience and revolt -opposed to his expressed wishes. He had imprudently risked a trial of -strength with Carol, and been thrown. Not only had he less hold on his -son’s affections, but actually less power over his actions than this -youth who cared, he was convinced, so little for either one or the -other. He felt sore and injured, and Tim supremely miserable, for some -time; days during which they met and lived together as usual, and tried -with very poor success to behave as though nothing had happened. Tim -continued to write to Carol, but he did so henceforth in his room, and -carried his letters to the post himself, not from a desire to conceal -the fact from his father, but only to avoid a recurrence of the painful -scene in the library; and indeed it had no successors. Mr. Ebbesley had -delivered himself of his views, and thereafter the grave was not more -silent; the subject of Carol was no more mentioned between him and his -son. And Tim wrote no word of what had happened to Carol. In the first -place, he would have died a thousand deaths sooner than say a word that -could distress him, and in the second, he was far too proud to let even -his best friend into the secret of his disagreement with his father. His -letters flowed on in their usual channel, and if they were a little -lacking in spirit, their recipient was by no means an observant critic, -and least of all just then, being, as we shall see, much preoccupied -with affairs of his own. - -For, if Tim’s letters were unchanged, Carol’s certainly were not. There -crept into them about this time a quite new and strange tone, which did -not pass unnoticed by his young correspondent. It would be difficult to -describe exactly what it was; but chance remarks scattered up and down, -together with a certain abstract and speculative turn of sentence quite -foreign to the young man’s usual style, would have indicated pretty -clearly to any one but a baby what was the matter with the writer. ‘I -feel,’ he wrote, ‘that I am approaching a turning-point in my life, -which will make me either very happy or very miserable; and I feel too -that it is for life.’ And elsewhere he congratulated Tim on being ‘still -of an age when he was not likely to know what it was to care more for -one person than for all the rest of the world,’ at which his friend -smiled a little sadly, thinking that he did. There are no notes on these -letters in Tim’s handwriting, only the date; probably they puzzled the -boy not a little. - -That Carol was not quite himself seemed pretty clear; then it dawned -upon him that his state of mind indicated strong affection for some one, -and almost simultaneously he arrived at the chilling conviction that -that some one was certainly not himself. He hardly knew how to reply to -these strange unfamiliar letters; no doubt he thought he was expected -to make some sign of sympathy or interest, but with the vague and -fragmentary knowledge he possessed, he felt it impossible to do so. In -one way he was undoubtedly the gainer by this mystery. At no previous -time had Carol ever written, not only so regularly, but so often; hardly -a week passed without his hearing from him, and usually at some length. -Still he felt uneasily that something was wrong; and when at the end of -the Cambridge May term his friend wrote that he was coming down to Eton -for a day or two, he was glad not only with the joy of meeting again, -but almost more so at the opportunity thus afforded to him of judging if -his voice, look, or manner were in keeping with the strangeness of his -epistolary style. And yet he half feared to see in him the probable -confirmation of his suspicions of something being wrong. - -When Carol did come, his behaviour was even stranger than his writing. -Instead of launching himself out on to the pavement over the closed -door of his fly the moment it drew up in front of tutor’s, and sending a -flying glance up the house-front for any friends who might be on the -look-out, as was his usual custom, followed by a tremendous shout if his -eye caught a familiar face, Tim, who was watching from his window, was -amazed to see him sit meekly while the driver descended from his box and -opened the door, and then inquire what he owed him, as though he had -just taken the drive from Slough Station to Eton for the first time in -his life. And having paid the man, who had driven him any time these -seven years, and was too much astonished even to overcharge him, he -walked into the house without once looking up. Tim sat down and stared. -What did it all mean? Nor had he less cause to wonder when Carol came up -to visit him; he greeted him with more than ordinary cordiality, and -then laughed a little, and then seemed to forget his existence, becoming -absorbed in a minute inspection of everything in the room, as if he had -never seen it before. - -‘Holker isn’t going to play in the next match,’ began Tim, producing the -cricket shop he had been carefully storing himself with for Carol’s -arrival. ‘He missed three catches on Tuesday, and as all his chance was -for his fielding, Jones has told Tuttiett he’ll try him. They say -Holker’s furious, and swears if he don’t get his eleven, it’ll be -because Jones hates him, and will be sure to spite him if he can.’ - -‘Who’s Jones?’ inquired Carol dreamily. - -Now Jones had been in his own eleven, and they had played together in -all the matches only one short year before, not to mention that they had -been, as Tim knew, in close correspondence ever since, the ex-captain -giving his successor the benefit of his greater experience in all -matters relating to the government of the cricket world. - -‘Who’s Jones!’ echoed Tim in such unfeigned surprise that Carol pulled -himself together, laughed again, and said he wasn’t thinking. - -They talked about the eleven for a little, but it was obvious that the -old boy’s heart was not as heretofore in the talk, and presently he -wandered to the window, and began pitilessly pulling to pieces one of -Tim’s best fancy geraniums. Tim’s flower-box was his especial pride and -glory; he loved and tended his flowers as no other boy in the house did, -and it is on record that on one occasion, when he was watering them, and -some of the water had gone on the head of the big boy in the room below, -who happened to be talking out of the window to a friend, that hero, -having come up breathing vengeance, had been so struck with the beauty -of the little garden that he had sat down to talk about it, the wooden -spoon he had brought with him lying idly in his lap. Ordinarily, Carol -would not for the world have injured one of these treasures, as much -from dislike of giving pain as from his own feeling towards them, the -result of Miss Kate’s early training. Tim could stand it no longer. - -‘Carol,’ he said, laying a timid hand on the strong arm that was working -havoc among his pelargoniums, ‘please forgive me for being curious, but -isn’t there something up? You don’t seem like yourself; and your letters -have been so rum lately. Is anything wrong? Can I do anything? Won’t you -tell me what’s the matter?’ - -Carol turned and looked at him; then he took his hand and said gently-- - -‘By Jove, Tim, what a clever little soul you are! fancy your noticing -like that. Shall I tell you? After all, I’d sooner tell you than any -one; you’ve always been the best and truest friend a fellow ever had, -though there’s so much difference in our ages.’ - -Tim was gratified. ‘You’ve always been so good to me, Carol,’ he said, -‘and I don’t care much for many people.’ - -‘Can you keep a secret?’ asked his friend; ‘for it _is_ a secret at -present.’ - -The tortures of the Inquisition, Tim protested, should not draw a word -from him, when Carol had bid him be silent; and then out it all came. - -‘Why shouldn’t he tell him? He might think it odd of him to do so, but -tell some one he must, and the fact was, to cut a long story short, he -was in love. He remembered Miss Markham Willis--Violet?’ (Yes, Tim -remembered her, and with her a whole train of old apprehensions.) ‘Well, -she was the girl he was in love with, and she was the loveliest girl in -all England, and the kindest to her little brothers and sisters, and, in -fact, the most peerless in all the relations of life; and he knew every -one would say they were too young, but he knew what love was, and he saw -now that he had loved her ever since they first met, and he should never -feel the same for any one else, and Tim wasn’t to say a word about it.’ - -Standing there opposite to him, holding his hands, his honest blue eyes -wet with emotion, and his voice that Tim had heard always firm, and -sometimes loud, trembling as he made the confession of his young love, -there was something beautiful and touching in the great strong boy; he -seemed to have lost all his masterfulness, and to be quite meek and -uncertain of himself for the first time in his life. And Tim, part -frightened, and part regretful, and part gratified at having been -selected as confidant on so important an occasion, promised -silence,--would have promised anything, in fact, that Carol had -demanded,--and Carol, the floodgates of his silence being burst at last, -and the tide of his feelings finding free vent, went on and said much -more. - -Violet and her mother had been staying at Cambridge for the May week -with some Head of a college who was their kinsman, and Carol had been -bound, in common politeness, to do the honours of his University to his -country neighbours; so that was how matters had come to a crisis with -him, and the conviction had been borne in upon him in the intervals of -boat-races, flower-shows, and dancing that for him there was and would -always be but one woman in the world. - -‘And does she--does she--?’ inquired Tim discreetly. - -‘Ah! there’s where it is,’ cried the other; ‘I think, I really think she -likes me, but I didn’t dare speak; it seemed as if it couldn’t be -possible such a girl should really care for me.’ - -‘Not care for _you_!’ exclaimed Tim almost angrily, and then he stopped, -much embarrassed. - -‘Oh, you are such a staunch little friend!’ said Carol; ‘you think much -too well of me, don’t you know.’ - -But for all that he was cheered by his friend’s enthusiasm; and the mere -fact of having unburthened himself to patient and sympathetic ears sent -him off more nearly restored to his normal frame of mind, to discuss the -new choices with Jones, quite like a sane mortal. - -So Carol and Violet fell in love; for it was not many weeks after this -that he found the courage he had lacked at Cambridge, and his modest -‘thinking she liked him’ was converted into triumphant certainty. They -were absurdly young of course. Violet was only seventeen and Carol not -yet twenty when they first discovered they were made for one another, -and mutually imparted this intelligence, as, I am told, is the manner of -young people. Of course, too, the old people, as is _their_ manner, -scouted the notion, and said, ‘Nonsense; boy and girl; too young to -think of such things.’ But the tendency of boys and girls being to get -their way in matters of this sort, in spite of much more severe elders -than Mr. and Mrs. Markham Willis, or the dear old Darleys, a compromise -was at last effected. In two years, when Carol left the University, if -he and Violet were still of the same mind the thing should be; but in -the meanwhile they were not to be considered engaged, and not to -correspond,--a very wise decision, as it seems to me, and one that -reflected credit on all concerned. So these two were to wait, as so many -others have done, and as they could well afford to do at their age, -having life before them, and youth, and good looks, and high spirits to -cheer them through their waiting. - -Tim was installed as prime confidant, and to him Carol told or wrote all -his hopes and fears. When the compromise was extracted from the old -people, he came radiant to the manor-house, and finding Tim alone in the -garden, poured out all his golden dream to him. - -‘Two years were quite a short time to wait; many people had to wait half -their lives. He would serve for Violet as long as Jacob had for Rachel, -if need were; and wasn’t it grand of her to promise to wait for him? -though of course he could not accept such a promise, and had quite -refused to bind her.’ - -Tim listened to it all, now and then squeezing his friend’s hand in -token of sympathy and attention; luckily he was not expected to say -much, for he would have been rather at a loss what to say. His mind was -travelling one year back to the day when he had gone up to the Court and -found Violet installed in the drawing-room there; all the thoughts so -vague and unintelligible to him then had taken form and substance; now -he understood what the shadow was that had fallen across his path that -day; that thing he had dimly guessed at had come upon him, and it was to -him that Carol looked for rejoicing in his joy. Of course he _did_ -rejoice, and felt delighted that this new experience of his idol seemed -only to bring them nearer together instead of separating them; but was -it really so? It is true, he saw more of him than he had ever done -before, and when he went away again, heard from him oftener; but the -talks and the letters were full of Violet, and of Violet only; she was -the cause of it all. If Carol desired his society, it was that to him -better than any one he could discourse of her perfections; if he wrote -nearly every day, it was that he was not allowed to write to her, and -the next best thing was writing about her. Tim was useful only as the -safety-valve which allowed him to let off some of the enthusiasm with -which he was overflowing. He would have liked to cry the name of his -beloved to all the winds; failing that, it was a comfort to hold forth -on the subject either with tongue or pen. And Tim saw all this quite -plainly, and somehow was not as grateful at being selected for the part -he was playing as he felt he should be. ‘Would he like it after all,’ he -asked himself, ‘since this thing was to be’ (and he bowed before the -inevitable), ‘had Carol selected any one else to whom to lay open his -heart?’ He took himself to task for not feeling happier in his friend’s -happiness. This was not the devotion he had vowed to him in his own -heart, this selfishness that put himself before the object of his -affection, which refused to dance at the dear one’s piping. Somehow he -felt it would be easier to lament at his mourning; and for this too he -had by and by the opportunity, as we shall see. - - - - -CHAPTER XI - - Love is strong as death. - Jealousy is cruel as the grave. - - _Solomon’s Song._ - - -‘He wants great care and attention; there is no use denying it. He is -not the sort of lad with whom you can afford to run risks. He has no -stamina, none; no constitution. I don’t say he is ill. God grant he may -not be, for he hasn’t the strength to throw things off as some boys do.’ - -The speaker was the old Stoke Ashton doctor, and the subject of his -remarks was Tim. It was a hard winter, and the boy was not very well. He -did not outgrow his childish delicacy, though it would be hard to say -quite what was the matter with him. Mrs. Quitchett used to trot off to -her old friend the doctor and have long talks with him in his surgery, -from which she would come away blowing her nose and very red about the -eyelids. She got him to drop in as if by accident every now and then at -the manor-house when Tim was at home, and so accustomed was the boy to -these half friendly, half professional visits of his earliest friend -that she thought they awoke no suspicions in his breast. It was after -one of these unofficial inspections that the old doctor delivered -himself of the above remark. - -‘That’s what you always said,’ replied Mrs. Quitchett; ‘I must say you -have always said the same; but he seems somehow different this winter -from what I’ve ever seen him before.’ - -‘Do you think,’ asked the doctor, ‘that he can have anything on his -mind? Anything like fretting would be the worst thing in the world for -him. I suppose,’ he added tentatively, ‘he can’t have got into any -trouble of any kind?’ - -‘Trouble!’ echoed Mrs. Quitchett scornfully; ‘he’s the best-behaved and -steadiest boy in the kingdom of Britain. _He_ in any trouble; why, a -saint from heaven would be more likely ever to have a thought that -wasn’t out of the Bible than him. As to his having anything on his mind, -what _should_ he have, poor lamb, I should like to know?’ - -The doctor said if _she_ didn’t know of anything, _he_ certainly -couldn’t be expected to; that he had only thrown out the suggestion for -what it was worth. Boys would be boys, and the best of them got into -scrapes sometimes, and therewith took himself off. - -But his nurse was wrong in supposing that the doctor’s frequent -droppings-in were lost upon Tim. I don’t know otherwise what train of -thought it could have been which led him one day to ask his father -whether his grandmother hadn’t died rather suddenly. The question -surprised Mr. Ebbesley, who wondered how the boy knew anything about -his grandparents. - -‘Yes,’ he said, ‘she died very suddenly.’ - -‘Had she heart disease?’ - -‘No. I don’t think she had anything of that sort, but she had never been -very strong; it was more a general lowness of tone, something like -breaking up, and yet she was not an old woman. I think being in that -weak state she must have caught something, but I remember very little -about it. I was quite a child at the time.’ - -‘Then she was quite young when she died?’ - -‘Oh yes, not thirty, I think; all my mother’s family were delicate; they -were not long-lived people.’ And Mr. Ebbesley rather hastily changed the -conversation. This curiosity as to illness and death seemed to him -morbid and unhealthy, and perhaps he feared the boy might go on by a -natural transition to ask about his own mother. - -He had been even less at home than usual that winter, but he too had -noticed in his visits to the manor-house that his son was not looking -well, and this conversation, chiming in with certain dark hints of Mrs. -Quitchett’s, made him feel it a duty to have him thoroughly examined -before sending him back to school. The Granthurst doctor was sent for in -addition to our old friend, and the two together undressed Tim, and -sounded him, and thumped him, and did all the inscrutable things doctors -do. ‘No,’ they said, ‘there was no organic trouble. The lungs were not -affected; the action of the heart was weak, but not in any way diseased; -the general tone was low; the circulation bad. He must not overtire -himself, must be made to dress warm, must be well fed,’ etc. etc. etc. -So Tim went back to Eton with many injunctions from Mrs. Quitchett, who -was more than usually fussy and particular in her directions to him, to -be very careful not to get tired or to sit in damp clothes, and to be -sure to put something round his neck and over his mouth if he had to go -out at night. - -Tim was sixteen that March. How our story runs away with us, carrying us -over years in which he changed much in many ways, but remained always -unchanged on the side on which my business is to show him. He had been -growing a good deal of late, yet he was not tall for his age either, and -his slight, graceful figure made him look younger than he really was. -His hands too were small--delicate slender hands with long fingers, such -as do not often belong to boys who are quite strong. Tommy Weston, who -had a very respectable-sized fist, used to chaff him about them, and -solemnly invent receipts for the widening of them, which Tim took in -very good part, having a great regard for Tommy, and not caring a brass -farthing about his hands. It was bitter cold at Eton that fives half, -and Tim, despite his warm clothes, was chilly, and had to stay out -several times. - -But Easter came at last, mild, sweet, and smiling, as so often happens -after a cold winter. Easter was late that year, and the cuckoo was -calling from tree to tree and wildflowers blowing in field and hedgerow -when Tim came home again. He was just a little whiter, a little thinner, -nothing very noticeable, yet Mrs. Quitchett noticed it, and the doctor’s -words spoken so many years before came back to her kind old mind: -‘Things will affect him more than other people all his life; what would -be nothing to an ordinary person might kill him.’ She remembered too his -question as to whether the boy could have anything on his mind. - -‘Do you feel ill, my dearie?’ she asked him. - -‘Oh no, thanks, nurse dear,’ he answered. ‘You all make such a fuss over -me that you will end by making me think there is something really the -matter.’ - -‘Tim, my lamb,’ asked the old woman earnestly, ‘you won’t mind if I ask -you a question?--remember it’s your old nurse, who loves you better -than any one else, and don’t be angry,--you haven’t, not by your own -fault I know, but out of kindness or anything, you haven’t got into any -trouble at school, have you?’ - -‘Why, what put that into your head?’ asked Tim, and being tickled with -the idea, he laughed so heartily that Mrs. Quitchett was reassured on -_that_ head. - -Still she persisted. ‘There isn’t anything, then, that’s troubling you, -is there, dear,--nothing on your mind, as you may say?’ - -This time Tim did not laugh; he looked at her with some surprise, but he -only said, ‘You dear silly old goose, what _should_ I have on my mind?’ -and kissed her, and so the matter dropped. - -But Mrs. Quitchett and the doctor were not so far wrong after all; say -what he would, Tim’s illness was partly mental. The cloud of his -father’s displeasure, unexpressed yet always present, shadowed his whole -life. Thus his greatest joy, his friendship with Carol, came to involve -his greatest grief, his alienation from the only parent he had ever -known; and the constant conflict of emotions told on the boy’s sensitive -nature, and reacting on his bodily health, helped to weaken his already -too weak constitution. And Carol, meaning only to be kind, contrived, -like most well-meaning people, to make matters worse by coming to see -him nearly every day. He could talk unrestrainedly to him about Violet, -as he could to no one else; besides, he too had noticed the growing -pallor and creeping lassitude of Tim, and being really and sincerely -fond of his friend, began to grow anxious about him. He rarely -encountered Mr. Ebbesley, and certainly never guessed at his objecting -to his intimacy with his son. When they met, the older man was always -studiously polite to the younger; if he was rather cold too, it was not -very noticeable, Mr. Ebbesley’s manner to the general public not being -chiefly remarkable for warmth or geniality. Tim, however, lived on -thorns; he had made his choice and would stick to it, but he was -particularly anxious to avoid doing anything that could look like an act -of open defiance, and all this perpetual flourishing of Carol about the -place might very easily, in his father’s eyes, be made to bear such an -interpretation. Every time the two met he underwent real suffering, such -as no one can understand who has not experienced something like it. Mrs. -Quitchett, noting the shade that crossed her master’s face, and the -quick flush and drooping of the eyelids with which Tim mentioned Carol’s -name every time circumstances obliged him to do so in his father’s -presence, or rather, perhaps, guided by that divine intuition which -lends a sort of second sight to those who love much, arrived at some -glimmering suspicion of the state of affairs. The doctor’s suggestion of -Tim’s having some secret cause of worry had set her mind all agog to -discover and if possible remove it; and Mr. Ebbesley’s strange -behaviour on the day of his return from India recurred suddenly to her -recollection, and seemed to supply the clue to all this mystery which -her cross-questioning had failed to extract from Tim. Now as then her -love made her bold, and she determined to attack her master on the -subject the next time he came to Stoke Ashton. She had carried her point -then, and might again; the only thing that troubled her resolution was -an embarrassing doubt of what the point precisely was that she desired -to carry. Then she had a definite thing to try for; she wished to -extract permission for Carol to come to the manor-house, and had -succeeded in doing so. But here was Carol coming there every day, more -than he had ever done before. What she was to ask, she knew not; but she -felt, as she would have expressed it, ‘that she would be guided to -speak’ when the time came, and she resolved to make the attempt for her -boy’s sake. - -‘If you please, sir, can I speak to you a minute?’ she asked, planting -herself in the lion’s path on the first opportunity that presented -itself. She felt that what she was going to say bordered on -impertinence, and her heart quaked, though her face was calm. - -‘Certainly, nurse,’ answered Mr. Ebbesley with grave affability; ‘is it -about the books? Do you want some money?’ - -‘Not at present, thank you, sir; the fact is, I want to speak to you -about your son.’ - -Mr. Ebbesley looked up quickly, but said nothing. - -‘Do you think that boy looks well?’ inquired Mrs. Quitchett -impressively. - -‘He certainly does not look as well as I should like to see him,’ -admitted the other rather unwillingly, ‘but he never has done that. As -to his _being_ ill, I can’t find out that there is anything the matter -with him; he has been very thoroughly examined by the doctors. Is there -anything else you can suggest?’ - -‘Shall I tell you what the doctor asked _me_?’ asked the nurse, still -with the air of Nemesis. - -‘Certainly; let me hear it, though I don’t suppose he is likely to have -said anything different to you from what he did to me.’ - -‘He asked me,’ continued the old lady, ‘if the boy had anything on his -mind, if he was worried about anything.’ - -Mr. Ebbesley started. The conversation was taking a turn he by no means -expected. - -‘What in the world should a child like that have to be worried about?’ -he asked rather testily. - -Mrs. Quitchett did not flinch. - -‘If you’ll excuse the liberty I’m taking,’ she said, ‘I think I can tell -you, sir. I may be wrong, for I am only an ignorant old woman; but when -anything ails that boy I’m just bound to try and find it out; and I -think I have.’ - -‘For Heaven’s sake say out what you mean!’ exclaimed Mr. Ebbesley -crossly; ‘if there’s anything you want me to do, tell me what it is.’ - -‘That boy’s fretting, I can see plainly; and it’s something to do with -you and young Mr. Darley, though I don’t know what.’ - -Mr. Ebbesley jumped out of his chair with a smothered execration, and -began to walk about the room. - -‘Has my son been complaining of me to you?’ he asked presently. - -Mrs. Quitchett smiled with fine scorn, not untouched by pity, for the -poor man who understood his own child so little. - -‘Not he,’ she answered laconically; ‘I haven’t so much as got one word -out of him about it, though I’ve tried; but he frets--any one may see -that. And I’m very much mistaken if that’s not what it’s about.’ - -‘What do you wish me to do?’ asked Mr. Ebbesley, sitting down again and -putting on his grand manner. ‘Does not my son have perfect liberty to -see his friend as much as he wishes? Do I interfere in any way?’ - -‘I can’t say as you do, sir,’ answered Mrs. Quitchett thoughtfully, ‘and -that’s just what puzzles me. The young man he come and go as he likes, -but your son’s not at ease about it; and I notice that he never mentions -his friend to you if he can possibly help it. You know you took a -dislike to that boy from the first day you came home and found him here; -and whether you’ve ever said so to your son or not, he know it, and he -fret.’ - -When Mrs. Quitchett felt strongly she had a way of clipping the final -_s_ from the third person singular of her verbs, which lent a curious -impressiveness to her remarks. There was something so sternly judicial -in the old lady’s attitude and manner that Mr. Ebbesley felt called upon -to make a defence of himself. It seemed as though certain uncomfortable -doubts as to his own conduct, which had begun to trouble him of late, -had suddenly taken voice and shape and stood up to confront him; and the -necessity of justification that he felt addressed itself rather to them -than to his visible interlocutor. - -‘It is true,’ he said after a while, ‘that I have disapproved of Tim’s -foolish infatuation for his young neighbour, and I have on one occasion -spoken to him about it. He has an unhappy trick of exaggerating trifles, -and in the present case has chosen to make a mountain out of a molehill, -as usual. I told him that I thought he might with advantage to himself -be less like a silly schoolgirl in his friendship and more like a man, -and that I thought it bad for him mentally and physically to sit cramped -up all day writing long sentimental letters. He chose to talk a great -deal of nonsense about not “giving up his friend,” and all that kind of -thing; and now he is playing at being the persecuted victim, who bears -ill-usage heroically for his friend’s sake. It is all on a par with the -rest. He likes to fancy himself the hero of a story. It’s all damn -nonsense,’ he concluded suddenly, with a rapid drop into irritability. - -Mrs. Quitchett was routed; she could say no more. She felt that she had -failed; though in other respects she hardly understood Mr. Ebbesley’s -explanation, that point at least was quite clear to her, and she began -to make a sort of apology, ‘if she had presumed.’ - -Her antagonist, feeling pleased with his own exposition of the matter, -graciously told her not to distress herself, and added, ‘I am quite -right, you may be sure, and, I need not say, am acting solely for what I -consider to be the boy’s own good. I have no personal dislike to young -Darley; quite the reverse. I am sure I am right, and some day or other, -when he has come to his senses, Tim will be the first to acknowledge -it.’ - -‘If he don’t die in finding it out,’ muttered Mrs. Quitchett as she left -the room; but Mr. Ebbesley apparently did not catch what she said. - -Now Mr. Ebbesley was not alone in objecting to the intimacy between the -lads. Miss Violet Markham Willis had on several occasions, when she had -expressed her sovereign will and pleasure that Carol should do this or -that, been met by the answer that he must go and see Tim, who, he was -sure, was not well, and who must be dreadfully lonely and blue all by -himself in that old frog-hole of a manor-house. Carol in so doing was -performing an act of highest self-abnegation, and never doubted that -Violet must know it to be such, and approve of his motive. And she, with -the odd perversity of young ladies in love, never hinted that she did -nothing of the kind. But it is one thing voluntarily to sacrifice -oneself to a sense of duty, and quite another to be sacrificed, without -one’s consent, to some one else’s sense of duty. _She_ had never shot -Tim with a gun, and afterwards amused his slow convalescence, or -delivered him from stoning, or loftily received his admiring devotion -for eight years; consequently it was not to be expected that she should -in any way share Carol’s feeling about him; and to her he seemed only a -most uninteresting and unnecessary little person, who was constantly -interfering between her and her legitimate property. As a consequence of -all which, Carol’s amiability struck her as overdone, and she was -decidedly inclined to dislike the unhappy object of it. - -Now it happened at this time that Mrs. Markham Willis gave her -hard-worked governess a holiday, the first for two years, and Violet -undertook to rule the schoolroom in her absence. The little Markham -Willises were what is called lively, high-spirited children, and finding -the yoke off their necks, they became pretty nearly unmanageable, and -gave their elder sister a great deal of trouble. Violet was a very good -girl in her way, but by no means a saint; she liked to enjoy herself, -and to have her own way, and to be a good deal petted and flattered, and -told how nice and how pretty she was; and this severe and unusual strain -on her patience proved a little too much for her temper. She had -undertaken this, being really anxious to be of use to her mother, and -from the best of motives, and she was determined to go through with it -and not complain, but she was having a rough time of it; and, moreover, -it galled her pride to have to acknowledge that she could not keep the -order that seemed to result as though by magic from the mere presence of -the meek, colourless Fräulein, whom in her heart she had always rather -looked down upon. She felt sick and cross and bitter, and as some one -else always has to suffer when any one is in that frame of mind, poor -Carol came in for trouble in the present instance as being the handiest -and likeliest person on whom to vent her displeasure. - -It is far oftener for some one else’s faults than for our own that we -receive chastisement at the hands of our friends and relatives, and for -the most part we do not even know whose sins it is that we are bearing -vicariously. Maggie Tulliver had an old wooden doll that she ground and -beat when impotently hating her fellow-creatures, and Violet pitched -upon her lover to act this uncomfortable part. Perhaps their true love -had run a little too smooth if anything, and with human -unreasonableness, she may have felt that a little breeze in that -direction might clear the air and infuse the proper amount of necessary -excitement into the long wooing, which threatened to become a trifle -prosaic. Anyhow it is certain that Carol was made to suffer. And when -anything ailed Carol, Tim, you may be sure, was not long in finding it -out. He noticed that his friend came in and sat down wearily, asking how -he was in a sort of perfunctory manner, as one whose mind was elsewhere. -(Ordinarily Carol’s advent was made known by shouts or singing long -before he entered the house.) He walked about aimlessly and stared out -of window, much as he had done on that memorable day at Eton. Tim -forbore to press for confidences until Carol felt inclined to make -them; indeed, he almost hoped he would make none; he felt trouble in the -air by a sort of instinct, and shrank from fresh burthens, with sheer -physical weakness. Carol could talk of nothing, settle to nothing, and -soon went away; he was manifestly distressed about something. Again, the -next day, he was even more dejected, and on the third he broke silence. - -‘I’ve been poor company these last few days,’ he said with a sudden -effort, ‘but I’ve been thinking of my own affairs, I’m afraid, and not -of you at all. The fact is I’m infernally miserable, and you must try -not to mind me.’ - -‘You miserable! Oh, Carol, why didn’t you say so sooner? Can I do -anything for you? Do tell me what’s the matter.’ - -‘There! I knew I should make you wretched; I’m a selfish brute to come -and make you unhappy too; but I can’t help it. I’ve tried to say nothing -about it.’ - -‘And do you suppose,’ asked Tim reproachfully, ‘that I haven’t seen -that something was wrong? How blind you must think me; or else that I -care very little about you, not to have noticed.’ - -‘I suppose I ought to have stayed away,’ said poor Carol dejectedly. -‘I’m not fit company for a dog when I’m out o’ spirits, but I try to -keep cheery at home for the sake of the dear old people; and it’s such a -comfort to give up every now and then, and look as gloomy as one feels. -I’m a bad hand at pretending; indeed, I’ve never had to before.’ - -‘You need not trouble to with _me_, at least,’ said Tim, smiling -faintly; ‘I know you far too well not to see through it in a minute. But -all this time you haven’t told me what’s the matter.’ - -Carol blushed hotly. ‘Violet----’ he stammered, and then stopped -abruptly. - -‘Oh, Carol!’ Tim exclaimed, aghast, ‘you don’t mean to say she----’ The -thought was too awful to be put into words, but Carol answered it. - -‘No; not exactly,’ he admitted moodily; ‘not in so many words, but -that’s what it’s coming to, I can see.’ - -And then he went on to tell how Violet’s manner had changed to him of -late. She was no longer as she once was, but more as though he had -offended her somehow, and yet he could think of nothing he had done. No, -clearly it was not _his_ fault; she had got tired of him, that was all, -and meant to throw him over; it was very natural, and he had been a fool -to expect anything else. She was a great deal too good for him, and he -couldn’t blame her. Had not he himself refused to bind her? She had been -too young to know her own mind, and had seen so few people; he supposed -she’d seen some other fellow she liked better--and the poor boy ground -his teeth at the bare thought. She had a perfect right to do as she -liked, and it was good of her to let him down easy; anyway he must try -and take it like a man, and not make a fool of himself. - -On another occasion he broke down altogether. ‘Violet,’ he said, ‘had -shown her coldness towards him in the most marked way; he had seen her -coming down the road alone, and had hurried forward, determined at all -risks to ask what had changed her towards him,--any certainty, even the -worst, would be better than this suspense. But when she saw him, she had -turned down a lane obviously to avoid him, and he had not had the heart -to follow her.’ The poor fellow looked almost as pale as Tim, and -actually burst out crying when he came to this point in his narrative. -It was the first time in all their long intercourse that Tim had ever -seen Carol cry, and the act seemed so utterly foreign to his hero, and -out of keeping in every way, that it filled him with dismay, and took -from him all power of comfort or reasoning. - -‘Oh, Carol! oh, dear _dear_ Carol! please don’t,’ was all he could say; -the sight of tears in those eyes was more than he could stand. - -He could only accompany him home, giving him the help of his sympathetic -silence, and wisely refraining from all attempts at speech. - -‘Thanks, dear old boy,’ Carol said as he wrung his hand at parting; -‘you’ve done me lots of good’; and Tim went away alone for a little -stroll through the woods to ponder on all this network of trouble. -Things too deep for his comprehension seemed to be closing in upon him. -That _he_ should be unhappy had come to appear to him more or less in -the natural order of things; but Carol! - -What manner of creature then was this girl who could so sway the first -of men? To what order of beings did she belong, who might have Carol for -her very own, and exist in perpetual happiness with him, in perfect -interchange of affection, no one blaming or thwarting her; who yet -treated him like this and made him wretched? Many possibilities had -suggested themselves to Tim, but never this one. He was confused; his -head ached with thinking. The cheerful sights and sounds of the wood, -now beginning to deck itself with its first green, the bustle of the -birds at their early nest-building, the delicate yellow of the primroses -gemming the ground all about his feet, which at another time would have -been lovingly noted by him, had to-day no message of comfort for the -puzzled boy, as he vainly tried to find the ends of these tangled -threads of life, and love, sorrow, and anger. - -Presently his path led him out of the wood into a little parklike strip -of meadowland, skirting the lane that would take him home. The boundary -hedge was set on a bank sloping gently this way and that, but the meadow -was on a higher level than the lane. It was a balmy soft afternoon, -unusually mild for the time of year, and Tim was rather tired with his -walk; the thought just crossed his mind, how much more easily tired he -seemed to be now than formerly, as he sat down on the soft moss and -leaned his head against the trunk of a large tree that grew on the -summit of the bank, jutting out from the hedge on either side. How long -he sat there he did not know; he must have fallen into a kind of -unconsciousness, for he did not think he was asleep. - -He was roused at length by a sound of voices, and peeping through the -hedge he could discern the tops of two feminine hats, whose wearers had -evidently seated themselves on the lane side of the bank to rest, -directly below where he was. He was rising to pass on, when his -attention was attracted by the mention of his own name and that of -Carol, in a voice that made him thrill; it was Violet Markham Willis who -was speaking. He could not go on now; his legs refused their office, and -he sank down again in the same place. With instinctive repulsion from -the meanness of eavesdropping, he tried to call out to warn her that he -was there but no sound came from his lips. He was as though paralysed, -yet with all his senses morbidly acute; and then his whole being seemed -to resolve itself into an imperious necessity not to lose a word of this -conversation. - -Violet spoke in a high aggrieved tone, not difficult to catch in the -stillness of the spring evening. Mrs. Markham Willis had made some -remark on her daughter’s altered looks and manner of late, and Violet, -concealing the schoolroom troubles, had laid the blame on Carol, -whereupon her mother had said a word of expostulation on that head too. - -‘Oh, Carol!’ the girl was saying, when her voice first struck Tim’s ear. -‘Carol doesn’t care two straws about me; he may have fancied himself in -love with me at first, but it’s easy to see he’s tired of me. Would he -be perpetually running after that nasty little Ebbesley friend of his, -if he were really fond of me? he’s always with him, far more than he is -with me, I’m sure.’ - -‘Dearest Violet,’ her mother answered, ‘are you not a little -unreasonable? I can’t see, I’m sure, what Carol finds so attractive in -that boy, though I fancy it is his kindness. The poor fellow is -delicate, and very fond of him; and after all, he has a right to choose -his own friends.’ - -‘I should be the last to wish to deny it to him,’ Violet retorted -defiantly; ‘he can make a free choice; if he prefers “Tim,” as he calls -him, to me, let him have his choice by all means.’ And rather -inconsistently with her brave words, she began to cry. She was wrought -up and nervous, anxious to make something appear like a tangible -grievance. - -‘Oh, my darling, consider,’ cried Mrs. Markham Willis; ‘are you not -trifling with your own happiness? I am sure Carol loves you very much, -poor fellow; and you know it too, if it were not for this foolish -misunderstanding. Tell me, dear, what makes you think he cares so much -for this friend?’ - -‘What makes me think!’ echoed Violet, sobbing. ‘Doesn’t he always say -he must go to him, if I suggest our doing anything together? Isn’t he -for ever talking about him, and making him an excuse to get away from -me? If he wants me to play second fiddle to that ridiculous boy, he’s -just mistaken; I’ll never marry a man with an intimate friend. Never.’ - -‘Dear dear Violet! don’t talk so loud; some one is coming. Oh! don’t -cry, darling; do dry your eyes. I wouldn’t have any one see you crying -here in the public lane for worlds. Have some self-respect, for my sake -if not for your own. Oh! dear, come quick; your eyes are quite red, and -you have no veil; and some one really _is_ coming.’ - -So this was the conclusion, the explanation of the whole matter. It was -he, Tim, that was the bar to the happiness of the one being he loved -more than all the world. There was an irony in it all that made it hard, -very hard. There are moments in which thought gallops with us, and -Tim’s resolve was taken so quickly that he wondered at himself. Not for -an instant did he waver, nor rejoice that if he would, he could keep his -friend to himself. Even the thought that Carol cared enough for him to -make the girl to whom he was virtually engaged suppose that she held -only a secondary place in his affections, could not shake his purpose. -His duties all pointed one way--that to his father and that to his -friend brought into sudden harmony in a way he had little looked for. -Yes, duties pointed one way, but feelings tugged the other; and though -resolved to follow duty, he had a hard struggle to quiet the turmoil -within him. He walked home very slowly, strengthening himself in his -purpose. ‘Nothing ever shall,’ Carol had said; ‘at least it will be your -fault if it does.’ How well he remembered the words, and his own scorn -of such an impossibility. Now they mocked his wretchedness, and with -them recurred another sentence from quite a different conversation. His -own words to his father seemed to rise in judgment against him, and he -did not try to appeal from them. ‘If one loved a person truly, one would -do anything for him, even give him up.’ He was determined that he would -never repay all Carol’s kindness by ruining his life for him. He did not -pause to think of what he was doing to his own; that was a side of the -question on which he found it safer not to dwell at present. - -When he reached home he went straight to the room where he knew he -should find his father. Going up to him, he said, ‘Do you remember our -talk about Carol Darley, just a year ago?’ He spoke low and quickly, -holding his hat in one hand and supporting himself at the table with the -other. - -Mr. Ebbesley could not help a hasty questioning look; he was taken by -surprise; but he answered coldly, ‘Perfectly; I am not likely to forget. -You were good enough on that occasion to inform me that you preferred -that young gentleman to me, and that you intended deliberately to -disobey my express desires, which I must say you have done most -thoroughly.’ - -‘It was the first time I ever disobeyed you, and you don’t know what it -cost me; but that is not the point. Since then I have thought it over; I -am come to say that I will do as you wish.’ - -Mr. Ebbesley was more surprised than ever, but he would have died rather -than show it. He only said, ‘I am glad to hear it; I don’t ask what has -brought you to your senses at last; I suppose you have had a quarrel.’ - -But Tim did not answer; his heart was too full. He was wrought to the -utmost pitch of endurance of which he was capable. He could not have -said another word to save his soul. He hurried almost stumbling from the -room; the necessity to be alone was strong upon him. - - - - -CHAPTER XII - - But sworn I have; and never must - Your banished servant trouble you; - For if I do, you may mistrust - The vow I made to love you, too. - - HERRICK. - - -The next time Carol came to the manor-house Tim was not to be found; he -had run and hidden himself in the garden when he saw him coming. -Crouching among the bushes, he could hear the dearly-loved voice calling -him by the familiar nickname, and his courage nearly gave out; he -pressed his hands over his mouth as though he would choke back the -answering cry that rose naturally to his lips. - -‘Tim, Tim!’ shouted Carol, ‘where are you?’ - -Either there was, or Tim fancied there was, a tone of disappointment in -the voice. Carol was in trouble; Carol had need of him, and he must hear -him call and let him go unsatisfied away. It was his free act too; no -one had compelled him to it. But it was for Carol’s own sake; and in -that thought alone he was strong. - -For weeks afterwards, in the silence of the night, whenever he lay awake -(and he lay awake a good deal in those nights), he heard that voice -calling to him, ‘Tim, Tim!’ in saddest accents of one that sought -something on which he had counted, and found it not. He felt that his -one chance lay in avoiding a meeting with Carol, and the constant watch -and care to do so told on him fearfully, making him nervous and -excitable. He dreaded to stay at home, lest his friend should come and -see him, and almost more to go out, lest he should come upon him -unawares. He could settle to nothing; every step on the path, every -voice, every opening door, made him start and tremble, and when he -could stand it no longer, and seized his hat to rush out no matter -where, he would be taken with such an agony of apprehension before he -had gone a hundred yards, that he had scarcely strength to get back to -the house. No one will ever know what he suffered in those few days; and -when his father, taking pity on his altered looks, offered to take him -to the seaside till it should be time for him to return to Eton, he -eagerly accepted. Not a word was spoken between them about Carol; the -subject was avoided by tacit consent. William Ebbesley wondered not a -little what had influenced his son to act as he had done, but he would -not ask. He had long given up trying to understand the boy, who was as -full of incomprehensible moods as a woman. He concluded that deference -to his wishes had not had a large share in determining him, but there he -did Tim injustice. Anyway his point was gained, and he could afford to -be magnanimous; so the two went off to the sea together for the -remaining week or ten days of Tim’s holidays. - -Poor Carol failed utterly at first to understand what had happened. Tim -was never to be found when he went to the manor-house, never came to the -Court. Then one day the answer to his inquiry was that Mr. Ebbesley and -Tim were gone away to the seaside together. Tim was ‘poorly,’ the little -maid who trembled under Mrs. Quitchett told him, ‘needed change of air, -the doctor had said.’ - -‘And had he left no message for him?’ Carol asked; ‘was she sure there -was none?’ - -Yes; the little maid thought she was sure there was none. Mrs. Quitchett -was out, but she would ask her when she came in. - -Carol went away sad at heart. Tim would write, he told himself,--was -sure to write. He would not yet believe that Tim could mean anything. He -was not well; he had had to go away suddenly; he would be sure to write -in a day or two. So he waited the day or two, but still Tim made no -sign. Then Carol got the address from Mrs. Quitchett, and wrote himself, -but no answer came back. He began to grow anxious after that; to imagine -all sorts of possibilities; he had not known how fond he was of his -friend. He determined to go again to the manor-house, and ask if the -accounts of Tim were good. - -‘Yes’; Mrs. Quitchett ‘thanked him; she had had a letter from him that -morning, and he said he was better. He liked the sea, and thought it was -doing him good.’ - -‘And was there any--any message or anything? in short, anything about -_me_ in the letter?’ Carol asked with a little proud hesitation. - -No, there was nothing; Mrs. Quitchett had noticed it and thought it -strange. ‘But doubtless he means to write you a long letter himself one -of these days,’ said the good-natured old woman; ‘he knew his old nurse -would be anxious, God bless him! and so he wrote to her first.’ - -But the letter Mrs. Quitchett predicted never came. ‘If he is well -enough to write to her,’ Carol thought, ‘he is surely up to sending me -just a line, if only to say how he is; he might know I should be -anxious.’ And he felt, not unnaturally, a little hurt. He would not -write again until Tim chose to answer his first letter, which had been -all a kindly affectionate heart could make it, sympathy for his -ill-health, regret at his going, and no hint of blame at the manner of -it, not a word about himself. He had done what he could; now he would -wait. - -These were sad times for Carol; he was so unused to sorrow that it had -all the added weight of strangeness. Violet seemed to have given him up, -and now Tim--Tim, to whom he had turned in his grief with such implicit -reliance,--just when most he needed the support of friendship and -kindness, Tim had thrown him over too. - -‘I bored him with my troubles,’ said the poor boy to himself a little -bitterly; ‘it was very natural; one could not expect a child like that -to feel interest in such a subject. And yet he _seemed_ so fond of me, -and he never was quite like other boys of his age--older and younger at -once, somehow. Well, well, who would have thought he was only a -fair-weather friend after all!’ - -He did not know, poor fellow, all that the ‘fair-weather friend’ had -borne, and was bearing, for his sake; he could not see him sitting -gazing out to sea hour after hour, with eyes that saw nothing, and ears -to which the long wash of the waves upon the beach kept always calling -‘Tim, Tim!’ in the never-to-be-forgotten tones that he had heard but the -other day in the old manor-house garden. - -But when things are at their worst they generally mend, and Carol -presently found a star rising on his night that promised to comfort him -not a little. It was about this time that Miss Markham Willis, finding -that the _rôle_ she had assumed was anything but an easy or pleasant -one, finding too that the obnoxious Tim had gone away, and seeing that -Carol looked delightfully miserable as he made her a fine sarcastic bow -when they occasionally met in their walks or rides, began wisely to -consider that it did not make her domestic worries easier to bear to cut -herself off from her principal extraneous source of enjoyment, and so -determined to take pity on her lover, and show him some signs of -kindness. At first these only took the form of a few gracious smiles. -Then finding that these had not quite the effect she desired, she made -her mother take her to call at the Court, and there, as she had hoped, -was Carol. - -‘Why, Lily dear,--I mean Violet!’ cried old Mrs. Darley, ‘I declare you -are quite a stranger; where have you hidden yourself all these days?’ - -‘Oh! there has been so much to do at home, dear Mrs. Darley,’ answered -Violet, all radiant with smiles, and glowing on Carol at second-hand -through grandmamma. ‘You know Fräulein has gone away for a holiday, so -I have all the children on my hands from morning till night. I never -appreciated poor Fräulein before; but now I have had a taste of what her -life is, I feel quite differently towards her; if it was only the -bread-and-butter. I assure you, I rival Goethe’s Charlotte in the art of -cutting bread-and-butter.’ - -‘Dear, dear, do young folks read the sorrows of What’s-his-name -nowadays? My poor dear mother never would allow us to. She said it was a -dreadful book, and that when it first came out it made all the young men -commit suicide. To tell the truth, when I did read it, I didn’t think it -very interesting, but perhaps I am not a good judge. You _do_ take -sugar, Mrs. Wilkins, don’t you?’ - -‘Please yes, a little; thank you, quite enough. I _do_ hope, Mrs. -Darley, I haven’t let Violet read anything improper; what you said just -now about that book, you know. But Fräulein told me all young ladies -read it in Germany as being a classic. I don’t read German myself, but -I placed reliance on her.’ - -Carol meanwhile held obstinately in the background, looking black as a -thunder-cloud, and strongly inclined to compare himself with the other -unfortunate who was cursed with love for a woman that cut -bread-and-butter. But when the visitors rose to take leave, while the -elders were making their little farewell speeches, Violet took occasion -to say to him in an undertone, and with a look of gentlest -expostulation-- - -‘Are you angry with me, Carol? you haven’t been to see us for an age; -won’t you come and see us again?’ - -Had he been dreaming? he wondered; was it all a mistake of his, this -fancied coldness on her part? She spoke with such entire innocence, a -little justly hurt, but ready to forgive, that he began to think it must -have been his fault. His resentment was not proof against this; he -pressed the little hand she held out to him, and promised to come next -day. - -‘I am going primrosing in the morning,’ she said, ‘in Fern Dingle, so it -is no good coming then.’ - -And on the way home she seemed in such high spirits, that her mother -stole her hand into hers and asked her what she had said to Carol. But -Violet for all answer trilled out the words of an old catch-- - - The falling out of faithful friends, renewal is of love, - -until the woods echoed to her bright clear singing; and then, putting -her arm round her mother, she said, ‘Silly mamma,’ and kissed her. - -Of course Carol vowed to himself that nothing should tempt him to go -near Fern Dingle the next morning, and of course he went; and there, -over the big half-filled basket of primroses, the lovers made up this -not very terrible quarrel. Violet was half contrite, half reproachful, -wholly gentle and charming. - -‘Had she been sulky? she half feared so; but she had been dreadfully -busy, and the children had been a little tiresome sometimes, and she -had been rather out of sorts. Carol must forgive her if she had -unwittingly hurt him; how _could_ he suppose she meant anything; he -ought to have _known_ she didn’t.’ - -And Carol, we may be sure, was not very hard to melt. He began, on the -contrary, to feel that it was he who was in the wrong for having doubted -Violet’s constancy; but for this he, in his turn, received absolution, -and was presently taken back into favour. - -As to Tim, his name was not mentioned between them; if they thought -about him at all, which is unlikely, they certainly did not waste these -precious moments in talking about him. Violet’s little spurt of -indignation against him was of the most transitory nature; had she -recollected it, it would have been to be rather ashamed of it; besides, -he was gone away, and that was enough; and Carol would certainly not -have introduced a subject on which he was feeling a little sore. Violet -was restored to him; the first cloud that had shadowed his young -brightness had rolled away; and nothing else seemed to matter much. He -went back to Cambridge in a far more peaceful frame of mind, and plunged -with robust cheerfulness into all the pleasures of the May term. - -One day the old Squire, meeting Mr. Ebbesley on the road, stopped his -pony to ask after Tim. - -‘Sorry to hear your boy was not quite strong, Ebbesley,’ he said kindly. - -‘Thank you,’ said Mr. Ebbesley; ‘he is quite well again now, and gone -back to school.’ - -‘Ah! I must tell Carol when I write; he’ll be glad to hear it; the boys -are fond of one another; but most likely the young ‘un will be writing -to him himself.’ - -‘Ah! by the way, Mr. Darley, that reminds me, if you are writing to your -grandson, will you kindly say my boy hopes he will excuse his not -writing to him at present? he has to read rather hard for his upper -division trials, and by the doctor’s advice, I discourage his working -his brain in other ways, too.’ - -‘Quite right, quite right. When I was a lad we didn’t write letters -much. To be sure, it was before the penny post; but I can’t say I should -have used it much if it had been invented. I never was a good -correspondent; I don’t think I ever wrote to my poor dear father when I -was a lad except when I wanted money, which I generally didn’t get. -Well, good-bye. Can you come and dine with us, Tuesday?’ - -‘Thank you, but I am obliged to go to town again to-morrow.’ - -And so the two men separated; and, the Squire’s memory not being of the -best, Carol never got the message. - -It was quite true; Tim was trying very hard to drown in work the -recollection of his troubles. It is not easy to take bodily out of one’s -life a sentiment, the growth of nearly eight years, and not feel the -change; and Tim’s was not a nature to which changes came easily. To -take his devotion to Carol _out_ of his life, did I say? Why, it _was_ -his life; it had begun when he first began to feel anything, and had -grown with his growth ever since. In some fantastic way everything else -in the world seemed to cluster round that central point; nothing was of -interest until he had somehow brought it into relation with this ruling -and pervading sentiment. And it was this that he had undertaken to cast -from him and forget. He felt as some flower might which a child had -plucked from its root, and then stuck back in the ground expecting it to -go on growing as heretofore. - -As often happens, after the very cold winter came an unusually hot -summer. The air seemed to pulse and vibrate. Scarcely a leaf stirred of -the lime-trees before the chapel, heavy and odorous with their wealth of -blossom, and drowsy with the hum of innumerable bees. The boys grew -languid and listless over their lessons, and even over their games. -They fell asleep in three o’clock school, an offence with which the -masters could not in their hearts but feel a secret sympathy. The dust -seemed to spring eternal, almost from under the very hose of the -water-cart that went ceaselessly to and fro through the highways of the -old school, and the pelargoniums and fuchsias drooped in the -window-boxes, because their owners had not the energy to water them. -Eton is a healthy place, in spite of all its enemies say to the -contrary, and the life there is for most boys the healthiest that could -be devised. But Tim was not as most boys. To him, to eat, sleep, and -study in one small room, to wear a high hat and a tight black cloth -coat, with the thermometer at something fabulous in the shade, was very -trying. The heat that made other lads drowsy and languid, roused him to -unnatural and feverish alertness; so far from sleeping in school, he did -not sleep at all. When we reflect that in addition to this he was -fretting day and night over his hidden sorrow,--a sorrow from which he -was persistently trying to find escape in extra hard work, in spite of -headaches and other warning signs,--the result is not difficult to -foretell. What wonder if he broke down? He never went in for those upper -division trials. One day he did not come to dinner, he the soul of -regularity; and when they went to look for him they found him stretched -on the floor of his room, his face white and set, his eyes open, but -with no consciousness in them. They put him to bed and sent for the -doctor, who pronounced it a curious case. - -‘It is no doubt partly the heat,’ he said, ‘and he has been working too -hard; but he must have been in a wretched state of health to begin with; -neither the weather nor his work is enough to account for it.’ - -‘He has never been very strong,’ answered his tutor, ‘and lately I have -noticed that he has been working very hard, harder than was necessary -even. I have had once or twice to put on the drag, a thing I am very -seldom forced to do,’ - -‘He must have perfect rest and quiet, and must not write or read even -the lightest books for a long time to come; when he is able to bear the -move, he had better be taken home.’ - -So the tutor went and wrote a kind sympathetic letter to Mr. Ebbesley, -telling him his son was ill. How ill he thought him he took care not to -say, but he did say enough to carry an awful dread to the father’s -heart. A chill foreboding seized upon him, and would not be shaken -off,--a presentiment that he was to lose his child, that child so -zealously longed for, so little appreciated, and yet in a way so deeply -loved. - -William Ebbesley was in no sense of the word religious; the rough -struggle with the world that had filled his early years had not tended -to bring him into the devotional attitude, nor had he ever been visited -by one of those overwhelming joys that sweep the soul, whatever the -nature of its beliefs, with an imperious necessity for giving thanks. -And great and terrible as had been some of his sorrows, they had been -such as harden and embitter rather than the reverse. But now he felt in -some dim way a kind of wonder if this were intended as a punishment to -him for the little regard he had paid to the one blessing of his life, -which, in that it did not bless him in strict accord with his own -notions of what he desired, he had flung from him so carelessly, the -priceless gem of his child’s love. How that child could love, he had -seen; and till now the thought that the love was not for him but -another, had chafed and angered him. Now he was humbled by it. Who could -say but that had he tried, he might have turned at least some streamlet -of those freshening waters into his own parched and rugged field? - -There was an old woman once to whom certain kind friends of mine used to -send her dinner. She was quite past work, and absolutely destitute, -except for what was bestowed upon her in charity, but if the victuals -were not to her taste she would send them back. Was it that by so doing -she got better ones? On the contrary, the alternative was to fast, and -indeed to risk offending the givers, and so cutting herself off from the -alms for ever. The proverb that half a loaf is better than no bread, is -one to which we all give assent with our lips, but few people, if any, -are found willing to make it a rule of conduct. They will have a whole -loaf, new and soft, of the finest wheaten flour, and baked just as they -choose, or they will eat no bread, though they starve for it. These are -perhaps somewhat homely illustrations for the state of mind of a father -half wild with grief and self-reproach over a dying son. For something -told him, as I have said, that the gift which he had so recklessly cast -aside, would never be his now. His boy would die, and would never know -how much he really loved him. If he could only win him back to life, -only make him think a little more kindly of his father, he felt that -nothing else mattered. - -He went and fetched Tim home himself, and when he saw how ill and -fragile the lad looked, his heart died within him; he longed to fall on -his knees by him and tell him how he loved him, and implore him not to -leave him. But the doctor had cautioned him to betray no emotion, and to -conceal as far as possible any shock he might experience at his son’s -appearance. - -At first for a few days Tim suffered from a raging pain in the head; he -could bear no light and no sound, and they feared that he would have -brain fever. Then suddenly the pain left him, but left him so exhausted -that he hardly seemed alive. Still, weak as he was, the doctor thought -he had better be taken away from school, and his father carried him back -to the old manor-house where his childhood had past. As though to mock -William Ebbesley’s grief by violent contrast to the pale and feeble Tim, -it was the time of year when the earth is most instinct with buoyant and -vibrating life,--July, when the last crowning touch has been put to the -long work of spring, while no foreshadowing of the yet distant autumn -has fallen on any leaf. The lilies were in their tallest, whitest -majesty, the roses blushed and glowed in the old garden, where, a few -weeks before, Tim had hidden himself from the voice of his friend. - -‘I never see such a year, sir,’ said the gardener; ‘everything is -a-doing better than I’ve ever known it since I’ve lived here.’ - -Yes. Everything. Everything but that one blossom for which he would -gladly have bartered all the wealth of sunny fruit and folded petals, -and on which a frosty hand had been laid in the midst of all the warmth -of summer. For Mrs. Quitchett’s old friend the doctor, who had known Tim -from a baby, did not dare conceal from the poor father his belief that -the lad would die. How soon he could not say; he might even be wrong, -and Tim might take a turn and begin to gain strength; but he was afraid -to hope it. The little stock of life in him seemed to be ebbing away. He -might go on for a year, or it might be much sooner; it was impossible to -say. - -‘And could nothing be done?’ asked the father. ‘Were there no new -remedies he could try, no learned men to consult, no places or climates -in which the flickering young life would have a better chance to -reassert itself?’ - -The old doctor’s voice trembled as he answered. He was almost as fond of -the child himself, and he grasped Mr. Ebbesley’s hand and spoke very -gently. ‘I should only be deceiving you if I said “yes”; of course -consult any one you will, if it will be any comfort to you; but they -will only say the same thing. There is no organic disease; he is dying -of sheer weakness, and to drag him about the world will only use up the -little stock of strength he has left. If, as God grant, he takes a turn -and lives till the winter, then I don’t say but it would be well to try -a better climate. But at present he is as well off here as anywhere.’ - -So, then, there was no help for it; nothing to do but to watch his child -fade slowly from him, to see him grow whiter, thinner, more easily tired -day by day. - -The Darleys were all away, and Violet was with them. The Court was shut -up, and Tim might have wandered up there without any fear of meeting -Carol. But he found, when he tried it, that even this walk, short as it -was, was beyond his powers, and this, coming upon him with a vague -surprise, was the first intimation to him of how ill he really was. He -thought of the old childish days when he had skimmed across the fields -for miles round his home, and the Court woods had been but the beginning -of his rambles. - -Mrs. Quitchett thought of those days too, and wept when she compared the -child, small and frail, it is true, but lithe and active as a young -squirrel, with the figure of the slim lad of sixteen that moved so -slowly round the garden paths. ‘Who would ha’ thought, who would ha’ -thought that see’d us two,’ sobbed the poor old woman, ‘that he was the -one the Lord would take first to Himself!’ But to Tim she showed a -smiling front, watching every sign, indefatigable in her zeal to miss no -attention that might do good, and never admitting for a moment that he -was not getting better. - -As the Ethiopian cannot change his skin, so was it not given to William -Ebbesley in an instant to alter his whole nature; such changes do not -happen in real life; and even now he caught himself sometimes speaking -half-sharply to Tim, when the struggle within him was almost more than -he could bear. But the boy did not feel afraid of him any longer; it -seemed as though he had some intuition of all that his father was -suffering and had suffered on his account; he was beginning to -understand him, and in the place of his old fear there welled up in his -heart an infinite pity. - -One day, when Mr. Ebbesley had brought out cushions with which to make -the garden seat easy and soft for him, and was turning to go, as he -usually did after shyly proffering some such little act of tenderness, -Tim laid one of his thin white hands on his, saying, ‘You are very good -to me, father.’ - -‘Oh! my boy, my little son,’ burst out the poor man, ‘I have been a very -hard father to you. I see it all now; I thought, I meant to do what was -right, but I have been very cruel. Oh! if I could only atone! but you -will never forgive me, never love me now.’ - -The cry that had been stifling him was uttered at last, the proud man -had humbled himself, the thin partition that for eight years had kept -these two apart had crumbled and let them find one another. - -Tim for all answer put up his other arm and drew his father’s head down -upon his breast, and so for a little space they sat quite silent. After -a time Tim said very simply, ‘Do you remember the talk we had about my -grandmother? You said all her family died young; I think _I_ shall die -this summer.’ - -His father could not speak: he could not contradict him, he could only -fold him more closely in his arms; and it was Tim who spoke again. - -‘You mustn’t fret for me, father; I am surprised myself to find how -little I mind the thought; I think I am rather glad. But there is -something I have wanted to say. I am afraid I have not been all you -wished; I have disappointed and vexed you. Do you forgive me?’ - -Still his father could not trust himself to answer save by that -convulsive hold; the words meant to ask pardon set themselves in array -against him like accusing angels. What words could he find strong enough -to express all he was feeling? But Tim smiled and was satisfied. He -seemed as though he understood. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - - ... Even the weariest river - Winds, somewhere, safe to sea. - - SWINBURNE’S _Garden of Proserpine_. - - -As the weeks succeeded each other, one thought was ever present in the -mind of Tim. ‘Shall I see him again before I die? It can do him no harm -now. I shall so soon be out of the way; I cannot come between him and -his love any more.’ - -As his poor hands, whose hold on this world was loosening day by day, -grew thinner and more transparent, his face paler, his step slower upon -the gravel, his heart yearned ever with a patient longing for just one -more sight of the friend to whom his whole life had been true. But he -had given the crowning proof of his devotion--renunciation. The arms -that should have been upholding him in his last sore struggle, he had -himself unclasped; the dear lips and eyes that should even now be -smiling on his sick-bed, his own free act had sent far away from him. - -‘He will never know that I was true to him. I shall never see him -again.’ Through all the long empty hours this one cry repeats itself in -his soul. All the little life that is left to him seems concentrated in -this one intense longing for Carol. To see his face, to hear his loved -voice again, if only for a moment; to tell him the truth at last; only -once, just once, before he died. And yet even now he could not put his -thought into words,--could not bring himself to make this last request -to his father. - -As for Mr. Ebbesley, he too was troubled by one thought which he could -not find the courage to speak. He was always with Tim now. It was his -arm which supported the boy into the garden where he loved to sit, and -back to the house; no tending could have been more loving, more -sympathetic. But, as I have said, no one changes his whole nature at a -leap, even in the great crises of life; and there was yet one struggle -to be made with his pride before perfect ease and confidence could exist -between them. - -Hour after hour would Tim lie silent and uncomplaining, yearning for -Carol, but dreading to endanger the new-found treasure of his father’s -love; dreading to see the old cloud settle on the face that he was -watching, the hard look grow round the mouth, as it was wont to do when -in the old days he had been obliged to mention his friend’s name. And -William Ebbesley would sit beside him all the while, divining his -thoughts, knowing there was one supreme proof of his affection to be -given to his son, one sacrifice that he could make for him, one -happiness that he could give him, and longing to make the effort, yet -ever just kept from it by some strange inexplicable shyness and reserve. -For a long time he hoped that Tim would break the silence, would be the -first to approach the subject; but at last he saw that that was not to -be hoped, and he was half angry with himself for the cowardice that made -him wish to shift this burthen to those poor weak shoulders. No. It was -clearly for him to take the first step; had he not ardently desired some -way of showing his devotion to his son, and when he had it, was it -possible that he should hesitate? - -So one evening when they had been watching the sunset, which had left a -sham glow on Tim’s white cheeks, William Ebbesley, holding his son’s -hand, and with face half-turned away, said suddenly, ‘Tim, dear, you -have not everything you want; there is one thing I have not done for -you.’ - -There was a real glow in Tim’s cheeks now; the sunset light had faded, -but in its place an inward radiance, brighter but almost as transient, -had spread over the delicate face. Feeling his grasp tighten, his father -stole a look at him, and even then a pang shot through him at the -thought of the love that had called forth this happy flush at the bare -chance of a meeting, the love that was not for him, that might perhaps -have been his. - -‘Oh, father! you mean----’ Tim began tremulously, and paused; he dared -hardly complete the sentence even in his own mind. - -William Ebbesley choked down the last touch of the old jealousy. ‘I will -write to-night,’ he said quietly, answering the other’s unspoken -thought. - -But a new trouble had fallen on Tim. ‘Will he come?’ he said half to -himself; and then, ‘Oh yes. If I know him for the kind, generous Carol I -think him, he will surely come.’ - -Then he asked, ‘Father, may _I_ write?’ - -‘You know, dear boy, the doctor has forbidden you to write a word.’ - -‘Yes, I know; but this will do me good. I shall not be easy unless I -may.’ - -‘Won’t it do if you dictate to me?’ - -‘No. I must write myself; nothing else will do.’ - -‘Well, if you are sure it will not tire you.’ And he went and brought -the writing things. - -Tim took them eagerly, and was beginning to write, when he stopped -suddenly and looked up. ‘Father, forgive me; I am selfish. You are sorry -at this.’ - -It was so unexpected, the little impulse of unselfish consideration, -that at its contact the last drop of bitterness fell from the father’s -heart, and in his eyes for the first time for more years than he could -remember shone the blessed healing tears to which he had so long been a -stranger. - -‘No, no, my darling,’ he faltered hastily; ‘whatever makes you -happy--I----’ then his voice broke, and he could not finish. - -‘God bless you, dear dear father. I am quite happy now.’ - -And this was Tim’s letter: ‘I am very ill, Carol--dying, I think. Dear -Carol, if I have seemed ungrateful, can you and will you forgive me? I -could explain to you if I had you here, but I can’t write. Come to me, -Carol dear.--Your loving TIM.’ - -‘Father.’ - -‘Yes, dear.’ - -‘Do you want to see what I have written?’ - -‘No, my boy, no.’ - -Mr. Ebbesley took the letter and sealed it; then he sent it to the -address that he had already got from the servants at the Court. - -Whether it was the reaction from the tense longing in which he had been -living, or merely that as his strength decreased the change in him grew -more apparent, Tim seemed to get worse much more quickly after his -letter had gone. - -The doctor came and went, shaking his head sadly, and saying, ‘It is -quicker than I thought,’ and despair settled down upon the two watchers -by the sick boy. - -But still Tim waited day by day for the answer that was to bring peace -to his soul. Life was slipping away too fast. ‘Oh! come, Carol,’ he -would whisper, ‘or it may be too late; she will surely spare you just -for a little.’ - -Tim had been at home nearly a month now; the blazing July weather had -ended in a rather wet August. All around, the harvest lay beaten down by -the rain; not the only grain stricken ere it had come to maturity. One -evening, after a more than usually dreary day, the clouds had broken, -giving place to a gorgeous sunset. Tim had been placed on a sofa in the -open window, from which he could watch the purple and crimson and gold, -and the delicate green and lilac tints of the western sky; the same sofa -on which he had lain eight years before, pondering on his ‘angel,’ and -had seen Carol come in with his offering of grapes. - -‘Father.’ - -‘Yes, my boy.’ He knew too well what question was coming. - -‘Has the postman been?’ - -‘Yes, dear.’ - -Alas! no letter. Tim did not even ask, knowing that if there were one, -it would be given to him at once. He closed his eyes and lay quite -still. His father looked wearily out of the window; he knew what was -passing in the lad’s mind, and had come to desire the letter almost as -much as the sick boy himself. - -The air was cool and fresh. The garden was yielding a thousand scents to -the soft touch of the summer rain. The setting sun lit little coloured -lamps in the large drops that hung from every leaf of the grateful trees -and shrubs; the birds kept up a drowsy twittering. A few knowing old -blackbirds and thrushes, well aware that the moisture brings out the -fine fat worms, were hopping about on the grass-plot in search of their -supper. All sounds were strangely distinct that evening. - -Hark! what was that? surely a step on the wet gravel; not old Richard -the gardener’s step. No, it was a young foot that struck the ground -lightly, and scrunched stoutly along the little approach to the house. -Tim’s ears had caught the sound, and he started up from his pillows, his -cheeks aflame, his eyes bright and eager, while his heart beat loud and -fast. He would know that dear step among a thousand. - -He had come--at last, at last! - -Mr. Ebbesley stole noiselessly away, with a heavy dull ache in his -heart, and I am afraid neither of the friends noticed his absence. In -the same room, in the same place, in the same attitudes in which they -had met as children, they had come together again. - -‘Oh, Carol! are you come to me?’ - -‘Oh, my poor dear Tim!’ - -Carol could say no more. He was shocked at the havoc these few short -weeks had wrought. A sacred silence rested between them for a few -minutes. Enough for Tim that he was there; no need of words. Carol was -the first to speak; his voice was hushed and full of awe. - -‘I was not with my family when your letter came, dear Tim, and they did -not know where to forward it to me, as I was moving about; so I never -got it for nearly ten days, or I should have been here long ago.’ - -‘Oh, Carol! how good of you to come. I half thought sometimes--forgive -me for doubting you--but I thought you might not come at -all--after--after the way I treated you.’ - -‘Don’t let’s talk of that now, Tim; it’s past and gone. I don’t want you -to explain; I am content not to understand. I remember only the dear -good friend of the old days, who is come back to me.’ - -‘But I _must_ talk of it, please, Carol; I must tell you how it was. It -can do no harm now, and I can’t leave you thinking hardly of me, for -you know I have not very long to live; something tells me you are come -only just in time.’ - -‘Oh! dear dear boy, for God’s sake, don’t talk like that,’ said Carol, -with a great lump rising in his throat. ‘You are not going to--to----’ -He felt all the repugnance of the young and strong to face the thought, -or say the word. - -‘To die.’ Tim finished the sentence for him quite simply. ‘Yes, I think -so.’ - -‘No, no; you will get well and strong. You must, for all our sakes.’ - -Tim smiled and shook his head; it did not seem to him worth while to -argue the point; that was not what he wanted to say. - -‘Never mind,’ he said gently, in a way that put the subject aside as -unimportant. ‘If I had lived I could not have had you with me now. I -could never have told you what I am going to tell you. Carol, will you -believe me when I say that I never wavered for an instant in my love -for you; never loved you better than when I seemed to give you up?’ Tim -was getting excited, and Carol, fearing it would be bad for him, tried -in vain to stop him. ‘Oh, Carol! it was for your sake I did it; will you -believe me when I tell you all this?’ - -‘For my sake, dear old boy? I don’t understand you.’ He thought his -friend’s mind was wandering, but he was very patient and tender with -him, humouring him, as one would a sick child. - -‘She said--I heard her say--that I came between you. You know, Carol, it -was when you were so unhappy; and then I saw that I was the cause of it -all; and so I determined not to come between you any more; and, indeed, -indeed, dear Carol, I would have held my tongue for ever, only there is -no more need now. I could not die and leave you thinking ill of me. I -suppose I ought to have, but I couldn’t do it.’ - -A new light was breaking in upon Carol. ‘And did you do all this for -me?’ he asked wonderingly. ‘Why, Tim, I knew you liked me absurdly, much -more than I deserved, but I never dreamt you cared as much for me as -that.’ - -‘And you understand now, Carol, don’t you, why I didn’t answer your dear -letter? See, I have it here; it never leaves me.’ - -‘I was a beast and a fool to doubt you, Tim. How could I ever have done -it? but it _did_ seem as though you must be bored with me and my -affairs. And all the time you were doing this for me!’ - -‘Carol, did she mind your coming to me? Tell me I have not made fresh -mischief between you?’ - -‘She was very unhappy when I told her how ill you were, and she said, -“Oh! go at once to him; I can guess what it would be to be ill and -wanting you; and he has been waiting so long already.” And then she -cried, and said a great deal I did not understand at the time about -having been jealous of my friendship for you, and having had hard -thoughts of you sometimes, and that she was so ashamed of herself now -that you were so ill. I was to be sure and tell you, and to ask if you -would ever forgive her.’ - -‘There is nothing to forgive,’ Tim answered indifferently. - -‘But how did you guess,’ Carol continued, ‘how could you imagine that -she felt anything of the sort?’ - -Then Tim told him all that he had overheard Violet say, only softening -it off, and generalising a little with fine tact. And then, the -floodgates once open, he went on with sudden eloquence, the more -touching from its sheer simplicity, and told all the long story of his -constant love, but with as little mention as possible of his father -throughout, and of the part he had played in it. And this short hour, -which some may think was a sad one, was just the happiest of Tim’s whole -life. - -Carol listened in wonder and awe, not unmingled with compunction, as the -description of the feeling he had so unconsciously excited unrolled -itself before him. He forgot himself, Violet, his love for her, -everything for the moment in contemplation of this devotion, so -single-hearted, so lofty, so pure and so unselfish, which had been his, -all his, and at which he had been so far from guessing. - -‘I had no idea of anything of the kind,’ he said, more to himself than -to Tim. ‘I knew the old people were awfully fond of me, God bless them; -and I understand what I feel for Violet. But this beats me; I’ve always -been what’s called popular, I suppose. I never thought much about it, -but fellows have always been jolly to me, and seemed to like me. Oh! my -dear friend, what have I ever done that you should care about me like -this?’ - -Tim’s face lit up exultingly. ‘“Passing the love of women,”’ he said; -‘that was it, Carol, wasn’t it? “Thy love to me was wonderful, passing -the love of women.” Do you remember the day when they read it in the -lesson in chapel at Eton?’ - -Carol had forgotten, but Tim’s words brought back the scene with strange -distinctness: the big chapel in its stillness, the silence of a great -crowd, and of a crowd unused to be still, the little flecks of light -from the air-holes in the roof, the ugly picture of the finding of Moses -in the window opposite his seat, the droning voice of the reader, and -the flash of the little face that turned up to his, with the expression -that had puzzled him at the time. - -‘Yes, I remember,’ he answered. - -‘I have thought of it so often since. It would be grand for one’s friend -to be able to say that of one, after one was dead. Put your strong arms -round me, Carol, and raise me a little; I can talk better so.’ - -Carol lifted the poor thin body as easily as a baby, and propped it up -on the cushions. - -‘Thank you, that is better. Ah! don’t take your arms away; let me feel -them round me for a little. Carol, when I am buried, I want those words -to be put on the stone. My father will let it be so, I know, if I wish -it; I shall ask him the last thing. But you must remind him.’ - -‘Oh! Tim, I can’t bear to hear you talk so. You mustn’t die; we all want -you so much.’ - -‘Don’t cry, Carol; you will do as I wish, won’t you? And, Carol, tell -her how I tried to make things happy for her and you; I want her to -think kindly of me too.’ - -He laid his head on his friend’s breast and closed his eyes; the effort -of talking so much had tired him. Carol thought he was asleep, and dared -not move for fear of waking him; but by and by he said, ‘Do you -remember, Carol? I lay on this sofa when you first came to see me after -the accident. I had been dreaming of you without knowing it; I thought -you were an angel. And then I turned and saw you standing there in the -doorway. You kissed me that day, Carol. Will you kiss me now?’ - -Carol bowed his head without a word and kissed him. And thus their -friendship was sealed at either end. - -‘Father,’ said Tim, after a little, ‘are you there?’ - -‘Yes, my boy.’ He had come in, and was standing a little apart in the -deepening twilight, humbly watching the friends. How unlike the proud -man who had so bitterly resented his little son’s preferring another to -himself! - -‘Will you come here, father? I cannot see you there.’ He came round the -sofa, and Tim held out his hand to him. ‘You and Carol must love one -another,’ he said, looking from one to the other, ‘for my sake.’ -Silently the two men clasped hands over the couch. - -‘You must leave us now, Carol dear,’ Tim went on; ‘I must be alone with -my father.’ - -Carol longed to say something, but could not; he went out without a -word. Tim watched him walk away with eyes that knew they were taking -their last look. Then a satisfied smile lit up his face as he turned it -to his father. - - -THE END - - -_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh_. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77847 *** |
