The Heiress of Wyvern Court Part 16

"Yes; he was painting the portrait of the gentleman with whom he's gone abroad when--when he was taken ill"--the child's sweet grey eyes filled with tears. "He broke a blood-vessel, and--and 'twas said he would die if he spent the winter in England."

"And so the gentleman took him abroad?"

"Yes; it was very kind of him. A Mr. Mortimer--his father was rich once, only he lost his estate, so his son was poor, only he married a rich lady; and they are so happy, and Mrs. Mortimer is so beautiful," went on the child.

"Mortimer! Mortimer!"--the ancient lady shook her head. "No, I don't know the name," she sighed, looking at her son's picture again.

"I wonder where the little boy is, Madame Giche?" said Inna, out of the silence that followed, noting the aged mother's fond gaze.

"Little boy, dear?" was the dreamy response.

"Yes, Madame Giche, your dear little grandson."

"My dear, he's not a little boy--he's thirty-three years of age--that is, if he's living."

"Oh, how strange! why, he is just as old as papa, and I keep fancying him a little boy."

"No, dear, no," sighed Madame Giche. "And so papa is thirty-three?" she asked.

"Yes, just the age of Mr. Mortimer; they kept their last birthday together--you know--in Italy," was the quivering response. She could not speak of her absent ones so calmly as her aged friend.

"But papa is better, is he not, my dear?" questioned Madame Giche cheerfully, noting the tremor in her voice.

"Oh, yes! and seeing and doing so much, he is almost well--and--and having his heart's desire, at last, in seeing Rome."

"Was he never there before?"

"No, not since he was a very little boy. But Mr. Mortimer was; he has travelled a great deal; he married his wife abroad--in Switzerland, I think."

"Ah, indeed!" and again Madame Giche sighed.

"Yes, I think--I think he was tutor to a young gentleman there. You know, he does not mind my telling you; he often talks to people about that time--he doesn't mind a bit," said the conscientious little girl.

Just then the twins brought Inna a letter from Italy, and from her mamma. Madame Giche saw how the child's hand trembled at taking it, and drew the two little girls away, to let her read it in peace.

This she did, sitting down on the topmost stair of the grand staircase, among the coloured lights. It brought her good news--her father and mother were to come home early next summer, and she had thought when parted from them that they would not return for three years.

"Madame Giche," said she, after she had wiped away the happy tears which would come, dancing into the tapestried room, almost like one of the twins, "papa and mamma are coming home next summer."

"Indeed, dear: that won't be long to wait," returned the kindly old lady; and Inna, remembering the long, long years of waiting she had known, nestled to her side and kissed her.

Another joy came to Inna that same evening. Oscar was better, was conscious at last; he had just awoke from a sweet refres.h.i.+ng sleep, and cheered all their hearts at the farm, and his uncle had p.r.o.nounced him out of danger. d.i.c.k Gregory brought the news to the Owl's Nest. The change for the better in his friend had come at the right time; to-morrow he was to go back to school, he told Inna, as she strayed out to him on the moonlit terrace.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "d.i.c.k SHOOK HER BY THE HAND."]

"And now, hurrah!" cried the happy boy, tossing up his cap, and making Inna laugh a tinkling, happy laugh, such as she had not indulged in for so many anxious days. Then d.i.c.k shook her by the hand as she told him of her letter, with its good news, bade her cheer up, and promised to tell Jenny, whom he pointed out to her away down the shadowy avenue, standing by the donkey and cart--not to shock Madame Giche with the rumbling old thing by bringing it nearer, he told her.

CHAPTER XII.

NEW THOUGHTS AND WAYS--THE HEIRESS OF WYVERN COURT.

Spring again, and Oscar and his uncle had been out round the farm. The boy was somewhat spiritless and weary-looking; he could not be p.r.o.nounced to be ill or really weak now, yet there was something wanting in him which ought to have been there, making him more atune to spring-time.

His face was not much the worse for its battering on the rocks. He was still a good-looking youth, as Mr. Barlow told him one day; to which Inna responded, as the boy was silent, that she was glad, because nice looks were nice. This made Oscar laugh at last, and remark that nice, as used in the sense she used it, was only a girl's way of using it. Yet he could be grumpy still, though there was certainly a change for the better in him in that way.

As for Inna, she had been like a little shadow about him all through the winter, sitting by him through the long, cold, snowy days in the dining-room, he on a couch by the fire, she on a footstool, reading to him, chatting, working out puzzles--she and he together--and heaping up the fire till it blazed again. Once they had an earnest talk of that which was always making Oscar's heart heavy and his brow gloomy, of the time when he would have to take to the farming.

Thus Oscar was, in a way, prepared for what his uncle said to him after their walk round the farm that fine spring day.

"Oscar, do you know why I've taken you round the farm to-day?"

The boy had thrown himself listlessly on a couch near the fire.

"Yes, I suppose to remind me of what I'm to be," returned he.

"Well, yes, you have guessed rightly; and, my boy, has it ever struck you that you're not fitted for what you want to be?" asked Dr. Willett, doctor-like, going to the point at once, and so saving suffering.

"Yes, I know I'm too big a coward for it; and I suppose other people know it as well."

"No, not a coward, Oscar--events have proved that not to be correct. For instance, no coward would have saved that child at the fire; yet they told me you fainted as soon as 'twas done. The doctor at Bulverton Hospital wrote me that he thought there was something peculiar in the formation of your brain: what happened at Swallow's Cliff proves the same thing, and confirms my opinion of you, formed years ago--that your head would never do for climbing giddy heights, nor steer you through dangers in safety to yourself or to others. So, my boy, your sailor dream will have to be set aside."

"It was more than a dream, it was--it was----" the boy broke down and sobbed, burying his face among the pillows of the couch.

There was silence for a while, and when Oscar looked up he saw a tear trickling down his uncle's cheek, as he stood with his back to the fire.

"Uncle Jonathan, is that tear for me?" he asked, in wistful surprise.

"Yes, my boy; because I know what you are feeling. My life has been a silent one--too silent perhaps--but there are things that I, too, have missed in that same life. I doubt if there are many lives without the miss and the loss."

Something prompted the boy to stretch out his hand toward his uncle, and he took it with such a warm grasp.

"Uncle, I'll be a farmer; I've intended to tell you so for days--only----"

"Well, never mind, we understand each other now; and let me say this much, Oscar: the humdrum farm-life, as I've heard you call it behind my back"--Dr. Willett smiled somewhat sadly--"won't be so humdrum as you think, if you make of it a life work--a something to be handled n.o.bly, and made the most of. A tinker's life could be hardly humdrum with that end in view."

"If I were a tinker, no tinker beside Should mend an old kettle like me; Let who will be second, whatever betide, The first I'm determined to be,"

came jingling through the boy's brain, and made him smile.

"Yes, uncle, I see; thank you for speaking out." He raised his uncle's hand to his lips and kissed it, as a girl might have done; the distance between him and his uncle was bridged over at last for ever.

"You see, I never thought Uncle Jonathan cared for me before," he said to Inna afterward.

And now Inna seemed to walk on air; going here and there about the farm with Oscar, who was too weak for study still, but trying with all his might to take an interest in what was going on out of doors.