The Young Step-Mother Part 9

'Oh, nothing hurts me. It is poor Gilbert that I am anxious about.'

'So am I. Gilbert has not a const.i.tution fit for exposure. I wish he were come home.'

'Could we not send for him? Suppose we sent a fly.'

He was consenting with a pleased smile, when the door opened, and there stood the dripping Gilbert, completely wet through, pale and chilled, with his hair plastered down, and his coat stuck all over with the horse's short hair.

'You must go to bed at once, Gilbert,' said his father. 'Are you cold?'

'Very. It was such a horrid driving wind, and I rode so fast,' said Gilbert; violently s.h.i.+vering, as they helped to pull him out of his great coat; he put his hand to his mouth, and said that his face ached.

Mr. Kendal was very anxious, and Albinia hurried the boy up to bed, and meantime ordered quickly a basin of the soup preparing for dinner, warmed some worsted socks at the fire, and ran upstairs with them.

He seemed to have no substance in him; he had hardly had energy to undress himself, and she found him with his face hidden on the pillow, s.h.i.+vering audibly, and actually crying. She was aghast.

The boys with whom she had been brought up, would never have given way so entirely without resistance; but between laughing, cheering, scolding, covering him up close, and rubbing his hands with her own, she comforted him, so that he could be grateful and cheerful when his father himself came up with the soup. Albinia noticed a sort of shudder pa.s.s over Mr. Kendal as he entered, and he stood close by Gilbert, turning his back on everything else, while he watched the boy eat the soup, as if restored by every spoonful. 'That was a good thought,' was his comment to his wife, and the look of grat.i.tude brought a flush of pleasure into her cheek.

Of all the dinners, this was the most pleasant; he was more gentle and affectionate, and she made him tell her about the Persian poets, and promise to show her some specimens of the Rose Garden of Saadi--she had never before been so near having his pursuits opened to her.

'What a favourite Gilbert is!' Lucy said to Sophia, as Albinia lighted a candle and went up to his room.

'He makes such a fuss,' said Sophy. 'What is there in being wet through to cry about?'

Albinia heard a little shuffle as she opened the door, and Gilbert pushed a book under his pillow. She asked him what he had been reading.

'Oh,' he said, 'he had not been doing it long, for the flickering of the candle hurt his eyes.'

'Yes, you had better not,' said Albinia, moving the flaring light to a less draughty part of the dingy whitewashed attic. 'Or shall I read to you?'

'Are you come to stay with me?' cried the boy, raising himself up to look after her, as she moved about the room and stood looking from the window over the trees at the water meadows, now flooded into a lake, and lighted by the beams of a young moon.

'I can stay till your father is ready for tea,' said Albinia, coming nearer. 'Let me see whether your hands are hot.'

She found her own hand suddenly clasped, and pressed to his lips, and then, as if ashamed, he turned his face away; nor would she betray her pleasure in it, but merely said, 'Shall I go on with your book!'

'No,' said he, wearily turning his reddened cheek to the other side. 'I only took it because it is so horrid lying here thinking.'

'I am very sorry to hear it. Do you know, Gibbie, that it is said there is nothing more lamentable than for a man not to like to have his own thoughts for his company,' said she, gaily.

'Ah! but--!' said Gilbert. 'If I lie here alone, I'm always looking out there,' and he pointed to the opposite recess. She looked, but saw nothing. 'Don't you know?' he said.

'Edmund?' she asked.

He grasped her hands in both his own. 'Aye! Ned used to sleep there. I always look for him there.'

'Do you mean that you would rather have another room? I would manage it directly.'

'O no, thank you, I like it for some things. Take the candle--look by the shutter--cut out in the wood.'

The boys' scoring of 'E. & G. K.,' was visible there.

'Papa has taken all he could of Edmund's,' said Gilbert, 'but he could not take that! No, I would not have any other room if you were to give me the best in the house.'

'I am sure not! But, my dear, considering what Edmund was, surely they should be gentle, happy thoughts that the room should give you.'

He shuddered, and presently said, 'Do you know what?' and paused; then continued, with an effort, getting tight hold of her hand, 'Just before Edmund died--he lay out there--I lay here--he sat up all white in bed, and he called out, clear and loud, "Mamma, Gilbert"--I saw him--and then--he was dead! And you know mamma did die--and I'm sure I shall!' He had worked himself into a trembling fit, hid his face and sobbed.

'But you have not died of the fever.'

'Yes--but I know it means that I shall die young! I am sure it does! It was a call! I heard Nurse say it was a call!'

What was to be done with such a superst.i.tion? Albinia did not think it would be right to argue it away. It might be in truth a warning to him to guard his ways--a voice from the twin-brother, to be with him through life. She knelt down by him, and kissed his forehead.

'Dear Gilbert,' she said, 'we all shall die.'

'Yes, but I shall die young.'

'And if you should. Those are happy who die young. How much pain your baby-brother and sisters have missed! How happy Edmund is now!'

'Then you really think it meant that I shall'' he cried, tremblingly. 'O don't! I can't die!'

'Your brother called on what he loved best,' said Albinia. 'It may mean nothing. Or rather, it may mean that your dear twin-brother is watching for you, I am sure he is, to have you with him, for what makes your mortal life, however long, seem as nothing. It was a call to you to be as pure on earth as he is in heaven. O Gilbert, how good you should be!'

Gilbert did not know whether it frightened him or soothed him to see his superst.i.tion treated with respect--neither denied, nor reasoned away.

But the ghastliness was not in the mere fear that death might not be far off.

The pillow had turned a little on one side--Albinia tried to smooth it--the corner of a book peeped out. It was a translation of The Three Musqueteers, one of the worst and most fascinating of Dumas' romances.

'You wont tell papa!' cried Gilbert, raising himself, in far more real and present terror than he had previously shown.

'How did you get it? Whose is it?'

'It is my own. I bought it at Richardson's. It is very funny. But you wont tell papa? I never was told not; indeed I was not.'

'Now, Gilbert dear, will you tell me a few things? I do only wish what is good for you. Why don't you wish that papa should hear of this book?'

Gilbert writhed himself.

'You know he would not like it?'

'Then why did you take to reading it?'

'Oh!' cried the boy, 'if you only did know how stupid and how miserable it has been! More than half myself gone, and Sophy always glum, and Lucy always plaguing, and Aunt Maria always being a torment, you would not wonder at one's doing anything to forget it!'

'Yes, but why do what you knew to be wrong?'

'n.o.body told me not.'

'Disobedience to the spirit, then, if not to the letter. It was not the way to be happier, my poor boy, nor nearer to your brother and mother.'