Two Maiden Aunts Part 13

'It's business,' said G.o.dfrey with an air of great importance--Betty always called any talk 'business' that G.o.dfrey was not meant to hear.

'Please, Aunt Angel, let Penny stop here while Pete and I are talking in the kitchen.'

Pete was standing by the back door, with a sprinkling of snow on his hat and shoulders, and as G.o.dfrey appeared he brought out from some safe pocket various parcels very tightly tied up, which, when they were undone, displayed a china cup with

'Remember me When this you see'

on it in gold letters, two china lambs lying under a tree, and a needle-book with a picture of Queen Charlotte outside. G.o.dfrey was lost in admiration. They were perfect, they were just the very things.

The lambs would stand on Aunt Betty's table and the cup would hold Aunt Angel's tea, and the needle-book would suit Penny exactly. 'And was there any more, Pete?' he asked. 'There couldn't have been, surely.'

Pete, for answer, produced another parcel from the depths of his pocket, and exhibited a wooden wafer-box, painted bright red, and with a picture of Mr. Pitt on the lid. Pete watched with the deepest interest while G.o.dfrey opened it.

'You see, Master G.o.dfrey,' he said, 'I was a-thinking the gentleman would be bound to do a deal of writing; and as you said he was partial to newspapers, seemed to me Mr. Pitt would come kind o' natural to him seeing they seem to be mostly about him; and the red colour looks sort o' cheerful and might liven the gentleman up. Hoping it meets your fancy, Master G.o.dfrey.'

'I think it's beautiful,' said G.o.dfrey earnestly; 'you are a very clever person, Pete. Do you mean to say you got it all for that money?'

The smile on Pete's face broadened out, till it reached nearly from ear to ear.

'Well, sir,' he said, 'fact is, for its size and being such a good article, it was wonderful cheap, and there was some money out when I paid for it. And you being so particular about my not bringing a penny home, seemed to me I'd risk bringing this little thing here, in case it might come in handy for what you were talking about.'

So saying, Pete brought out another parcel, and out of the paper came a second box, coloured dark blue this time, and adorned with a picture of a s.h.i.+p in full sail, surrounded by a wreath of convolvulus.

'You see, Master G.o.dfrey,' explained Pete, 'it seemed to me, with you saying the gentleman had a fancy for s.h.i.+ps and flowers, and the colour being blue, which stands for sailors, it did seem the sort o' thing you were just a-wis.h.i.+ng for.'

'But, Pete,' said G.o.dfrey, as if hardly daring to believe in so grand an idea, 'do you think that sort of gentleman would be likely to be using wafers?'

'Bound to, sir,' said Pete promptly; 'you see, he'd be writing to the Admiral about all the fine things him and his s.h.i.+p was doing, and besides he'd be writing home to folks he was fond of, folks that thought about him, and--and gave him presents and such like.'

'Oh no, Pete, no,' said G.o.dfrey, almost breathless, 'he wouldn't be writing to those sort of people. But really, Pete, I do think the box is very, very beautiful; and do you think--do you think he would be offended if I gave it to him?'

'I'll warrant he'd be as pleased as you like, Master G.o.dfrey,' said Pete heartily; 'he's not the sort to take offence, isn't the captain.

Why, bless you, Nancy brought him in a few berries out o' the hedges on Sunday and he made such a work with them as you never saw.' Pete had dropped the little fiction about the gentleman in his interest, and G.o.dfrey did not object.

'I'm very, very much obliged to you, Pete,' he said earnestly; 'I'm as happy as ever I can be. Good-night, dear Pete, and thank you very, very much.'

And so came Christmas, the children's festival, touching home life and child life with its great majesty and beauty. Can any one dare to despise simple things and simple souls when all Christendom comes adoring to a poor cradle and angels stoop to sing carols to shepherd folk? Some such thoughts came into Angelica Wyndham's mind when Nancy ran over on Christmas Eve, very eager and excited, with the captain's compliments, and would Mr. Crayshaw and the young ladies and Master G.o.dfrey dine with him next day; and, please, she did hope they would come, for they were all going to have snap-dragon, and the captain had sent her out with such a lot of money to buy the raisins. And Angel wondered whether after all it was not surprising but right and natural that the captain should care for such things. Wasn't it the Christmas lesson that the great and the simple lie close together, and that the men who are foremost in the midst of death and danger have room in their hearts for children and flowers and home joys and Christmas games as well? And then Cousin Crayshaw had said he would go, and had declared he had a great respect for Captain Maitland. Altogether, it was the happiest Christmas that the sisters had ever spent at Oakfield.

And I think there must have been some magic about that cheerful wafer-box with the picture of Mr. Pitt. Mr. Crayshaw found it on his plate on Christmas morning, with an inscription upon it which had been composed by Pete, but written in G.o.dfrey's own firm round hand, and with spelling which was also quite G.o.dfrey's own--'To my deer and respekted cuzon.' And something about the box or the inscription--or was it just a Christmas thought which they put into his head?--made Mr.

Crayshaw turn away to the window as if to admire the striking likeness of Mr. Pitt, and then take off his spectacles and rub them and put them on again; and then he did what he had never done before, came round to G.o.dfrey's chair, and put his hands on the little boy's shoulders and kissed his forehead. They walked to church along the ringing frosty road, with the wide white common spreading away on each side like the snow-fields of G.o.dfrey's Arctic stories. And at the churchyard gate they paused, because there were two figures going slowly up the path before them, Captain Maitland, walking erect and steady, with old Kiah Parker on his arm.

'Easy now, easy now, Kiah,' he was saying, 'you'll have me on my nose if you go that pace, man; you and I are more at home on deck than on slippery ground; don't send me sprawling at the very church door, my hearty.'

And as for Kiah, he looked prouder than the Admiral of the Fleet.

After church, however, he hobbled on ahead with Peter and Nancy, while the captain stayed to speak to the party from the cottage. He had had the most beautiful Christmas present, he said, just the very one thing he couldn't have done without any longer. And somebody must have chosen it just to suit him, for it was a real bit of the old blue, and as for the s.h.i.+p, why the _Mermaid_ might have sat for the portrait.

'Just the thing for a present to a sailor from a sailor that is to be,'

he said; and G.o.dfrey looked as if he had nothing else in the world to wish for.

'Are you going to let me have the little lad one day, sir?' the captain said to Mr. Crayshaw, when G.o.dfrey had walked on in front between his two aunts.

'You do him very great honour, sir,' said the lawyer. 'I have not thought much at present about the boy's future career. He has been a difficulty, Captain Maitland, something of a difficulty. I was afraid that his unfortunate surroundings during his early childhood had had a very bad effect upon his character; but he is much improved, very much improved indeed. You think something may be made of him?'

'I think he is the sort of stuff that heroes are made of,' said the captain thoughtfully, 'and he has such influence about him now as makes heroes.'

Mr. Crayshaw glanced at the three in front of him and coughed in an embarra.s.sed way.

'Angelica is--is a very good girl,' he said; 'indeed they are both very good girls, very good girls. I had my doubts as to the desirability of leaving G.o.dfrey under their charge, but I feel satisfied now that at present I could hardly do better for him.'

'I think he is having such training as will bless his whole life,' said Captain Maitland gravely, and Mr. Crayshaw did not contradict him.

Perhaps a thought came over him that if he had had a gentle Angelica and a bright, loving Betty beside him when he was young, his life might have been a better and a more beautiful thing.

An invitation to dinner was such a rare thing at Oakfield that there was a good deal of excitement about getting ready for it. Penny and Angel and Betty all brushed G.o.dfrey's hair in turn, until he was thankful to escape and leave his aunts to get dressed on their own account. But he very soon came rus.h.i.+ng upstairs again two steps at a time, and asked eagerly at their door if he might come in.

'Aunt Angel, Aunt Betty, look!' he exclaimed as he burst into the room, 'presents, from Cousin Crayshaw. Oh, do look!--A seal, a real proper seal that belonged to grandpapa, with words on, that makes a mark when you hold it down on your hand hard. And this box has got things in for you; he said so. He was so funny, and he said it so fast I didn't hear it all; but he said I was to give it to you, Aunt Angel, because it was yours really, and perhaps it would help you to remember some things that were past and to forget some others. What did he mean? Only open it, do open it!'

So Angel opened the box, with Betty looking over her shoulder and peering between her falling curls, and Penny peeping over her. And it was Penny who was the first to exclaim, while she hugged both her young ladies in her delight:

'Oh, bless you, my dears, they're your dear mamma's jewels! Dear, dear! and don't I know 'em if any one does, me that put them on her times enough.'

'Mamma's things! Oh, Angel!' said Betty in hushed tones, touching the trinkets with reverent fingers. Angelica had put her hands before her eyes. A great rush of memory was sweeping over her, for it is the little things that take hold of our minds when we are children, and the sight of them in after years brings the big things in their train. And those pearls used to be twisted among the sunny curls of the head that had bent over her little bed on long ago evenings, and the ruby ring had sparkled on the hand that used to clasp her baby fingers. And that miniature with its gold setting? Did not mamma wear it on a gold chain out of sight? Had not Betty's little restless fingers pulled it out one day, and had not Angel wondered as her mother kissed it with dewy eyes and put it back? Betty was holding it to the light.

'Why, Angel,' she exclaimed wonderingly, 'it's G.o.dfrey.'

And Penny, with her ap.r.o.n to her eyes, explained,

'No, no, my dear, it's his poor dear papa, that's who it is.'

'My papa!' e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed G.o.dfrey, with round eyes, 'why, Penny, it's a little boy.'

'And so he was a little boy,' sobbed Penny, 'and the dearest, beautifullest little boy ever I saw or anybody saw, and his dear mamma had his picture done the day he was eight years old, and she wore it till she died, bless her heart.'

Angel bent her head and kissed the laughing face as she had seen her mother kiss it.

'And Cousin Crayshaw sent it to us,' said Betty thoughtfully; 'now I know what he meant about remembering and forgetting.'

'I don't,' said G.o.dfrey, 'but I want Aunt Angel to hang papa's picture round her neck.'

'Yes, yes, Angel, you must,' said Betty eagerly, clasping the chain about her sister's throat; 'you talked to him--you remember--and I don't really, though I'm sure I feel a kind of something as if I should know him.'

'Then you must wear mamma's pearls, Betty dear, you must indeed.'

'No, indeed, I mustn't, because you are going to. Yes, you are, Angel, don't say a word--you are going to wear them in your hair like she used to. Penny, please put up Angel's hair like mamma's picture. I am going to have this dear, dear brooch, with all the twisted bits of gold and the little tiny diamonds; fancy me in diamonds! You ought to have them really, but I know you like the others best.'

And so, a few minutes later, when Angel met Cousin Crayshaw on the stairs, he quite started at the sight of her, with the gold chain round her neck and the pearls among her dark curls.

'You have given us the most beautiful Christmas present in the world, Cousin Crayshaw,' she said, holding out her hands to him. And Mr.

Crayshaw, with a sudden impulse, kissed her forehead as he had kissed G.o.dfrey's.

'They were yours already, not mine, my dear,' he said, and then he added: