Two Maiden Aunts Part 18

'Alive, sir? Bless you, yes! he's coming round this minute; give us the can there, Tom; turn his face this way. How now, sir; won't you live to drub the "froggies" again, eh?'

Even as he spoke the boy's eyelids fluttered, and then a pair of wide grey eyes looked wonderingly round the group. He closed them again, drew a long breath, and then looked about him with understanding coming back to his face.

'Where am I?' he asked, and at the same moment his fingers seemed to be seeking for something.

'Aboard the _Elizabeth_ of Plymouth, sir, thanks to this here gentleman that took to the water for you when you and your raft parted company.

Is it a bit of a leather bag you might be looking for, sir?'

'Yes, is it here?' said the boy eagerly, and trying to lift his head; 'there are French papers in it, despatches I think. I dived after them when they threw them overboard; I kept them as dry as I could.'

'Safe they are, sir, and wonderful dry considering,' said one of the men after a hasty examination.

'You bean't the young gent from the _Mermaid_ frigate, I suppose?' said another, pus.h.i.+ng his head into the group.

'I'm G.o.dfrey Wyndham, H.M.S. _Mermaid_', said the boy faintly, and then, with sudden eagerness, 'Do you know anything about her?'

'Safe in Plymouth, sir, with a nice prize behind her. Every one taking on fine about you, sir.'

'Thank G.o.d!' the boy said simply and reverently. At the same moment there was an exclamation:

'What's wrong with the gentleman?'

The stranger had pushed his way through the group and was leaning over the boy, looking whiter than G.o.dfrey himself, and with a strange hungry gaze in his eyes. The kindly fishermen took hold of him, for he was trembling from head to foot.

'You let him be, sir, he'll do all right. Come you below and have a drop o' something, you're dead beat. There, sir, let him be a bit, and he'll talk to you fast enough. He's a tough little heart of oak, he is; let him be a bit and he'll do.'

'What did he say his name was?' said the stranger, kneeling down by the young mids.h.i.+pman and trying to steady his voice.

The fishermen shook their heads; they didn't rightly catch, only he belonged to the _Mermaid_, they were sure of that. Did the gentleman know him?

'I am not sure; perhaps I do,' said the stranger briefly, and he made a movement as if to carry the boy down to the cabin himself. Two or three pairs of stout arms were ready to help him, and plenty of hearty voices to a.s.sure him that the young gentleman would be all right; they'd get his wet clothes off and let him sleep, he was bound to be about done; he'd be all right in no time. And G.o.dfrey fulfilled their prediction by sinking into the sound healthy sleep of a tired boy, with a dreamy sense of satisfaction that the _Mermaid_ and the despatches were all safe. But the strange gentleman did not take the advice of his hosts and follow the boy's example. All that night he spent awake and watchful by G.o.dfrey's side. He had had a good many hard hours in his life, but none that seemed quite so long as those night hours in the narrow cabin of the fis.h.i.+ng smack, while the boat rocked on the heaving Channel, and the swinging lamp over his head showed him the sleeping face of the young sailor to whom the sound of wind and waves was the most familiar lullaby. How he studied the still young face by the uncertain light, trying to trace in the broad-chested st.u.r.dy mids.h.i.+pman some memory of a white-faced eager little boy who had once looked up wonderingly into his own sad eyes! And if he turned his eyes from him for a moment, it was to decipher by the dim lamplight that letter of Kiah's with the heading and the signature that were so familiar. And when the agony of uncertainty grew almost unbearable, he dropped his head in his hands by the boy's side with the half-stifled murmur:

'If it might be--far, far beyond my deserving--but if it might be!'

He scarcely noticed how the grey light of dawn grew stronger about them, how the gale dropped and the boat sped along before a steady breeze, until G.o.dfrey suddenly opened his eyes and looked up with the puzzled wondering gaze that thrilled the watcher through and through with vivid recollection.

'I know I'm not on board the _Mermaid_' he said, 'but I can't remember how I came here, and what boat this is.'

'You are on board a fis.h.i.+ng smack from Plymouth,' said the stranger, struggling hard to speak calmly; 'you were picked up last night clinging to some wreckage in mid-Channel.'

G.o.dfrey's face brightened with quick understanding.

'I know, I know,' he said, 'and the papers are all right, and the _Mermaid_ too. That's the last thing I remember. I feel as if I'd been asleep for weeks. I wonder if I shall get long enough leave to run home, it would be rare to tell them all?' Then looking up doubtfully at his companion, he added:

'I'm sure I ought to know you, sir; I beg your pardon, but I can't put your name to you.'

'Where do you think you have seen me?' asked the stranger eagerly.

'I don't remember, sir. It's very stupid of me. Is--is anything wrong, sir? Can I do anything?'

'Yes,' cried the stranger, with his self-control breaking down, 'you can tell me in mercy the name of your father.'

'My father's name was Bernard Wyndham,' said G.o.dfrey wonderingly. 'He was killed in the West Indies some years ago. I say, what is it, sir--you're ill, aren't you? I'll fetch----'

But the stranger had fast hold of him.

'Don't fetch any one,' he gasped, 'I want you, only you. G.o.dfrey, my boy, my son, look at me, don't quite forget me--you say you've seen me before! G.o.dfrey, believe me--don't say you can't believe me, my boy, my only child!'

The colour rushed into G.o.dfrey's face.

'I--I don't understand,' he faltered. 'Why didn't you come?'

'Because I thought you were dead, my little boy; because they told me every one died together, and you too. Because when I got free and came back they showed me the graves and told me yours was one.'

Still G.o.dfrey held back doubtfully, though the pale eager face was so strangely familiar.

'But why didn't you come home?' he asked; 'they've been so unhappy about you, the aunts have. Why didn't you let them know?'

'Because I was a coward, G.o.dfrey; because I never knew they cared for me--why should they? Ay, and why should you?'

He had turned his head away, when he suddenly felt himself seized in such an embrace as G.o.dfrey generally kept for Angel and Betty.

'Father,' cried the eager young voice, 'papa, I'm a brute, I didn't understand! I know you now--I half knew you all the time. Why, they've talked about you all these years, they never let me forget. I say, I mustn't make a baby of myself, I'm an officer, you know, but it makes one feel as if one was standing on one's head to think of bringing you home to them.'

And I don't think that G.o.dfrey disgraced the King's uniform, even if he laid his curly head down on his new found father's shoulder and hugged him as he hugged his Aunt Angel.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Chapter IX headpiece]

CHAPTER IX

IN PORT

'If conquering and unhurt I came Back from the battle-field, It is because thy prayers have been My safeguard and my s.h.i.+eld.'--A. A. PROCTER.

And meanwhile how had it been at Oakfield, little Oakfield, which had its share in the joys and sorrows of those stirring times? Angel and Betty could hardly remember afterwards exactly how they heard the news; it seemed to be all over the place directly, and no one could have said who actually told it. But it was Mr. Crayshaw who brought it--poor Mr.

Crayshaw, so aged and altered and broken-down that to care for him and comfort him seemed the first thing his two young cousins had to do and to think of. And indeed with Angel it was so much more natural to think of other people first that she seemed to feel G.o.dfrey's loss chiefly in the way in which it would affect them all--Cousin Crayshaw, who had had to meet the first shock of the news; poor old Penny; Nancy, who had been his playfellow; Betty above all, who had said she could never bear it if G.o.dfrey died for his country. Poor Betty made such desperate efforts to be brave and unselfish, choked back her tears so manfully, faltered such bold words about their boy having died as he would have wished for King and Country. And then she would run away and sob pa.s.sionately over G.o.dfrey's toy boats, the lesson-books he had used with her, the bed he had slept in, and then would tell herself she was not worthy of him, and come back to be brave and self-controlled before the others once more. While Angel, for her part, hardly expected to be ever worthy of her boy, only went her quiet way, cried bitterly on Martha's shoulder, sat on a stool at Cousin Crayshaw's feet as if she were a little girl again, and did the work which Penny forgot, and found comfort somehow from them all. Angel could not be Betty, and Betty could not be Angel, no two people meet joy and sorrow and do their brave, unselfish deeds in just the same way; and the beautiful part is that there is room on the great list of honour for the Betties who school themselves to courage, and the Angels who are simply brave in their self-forgetfulness, and the world is the better for them both.

It was three days after the news had come--Angel and Betty unconsciously counted the time like that now, looking back to the days when they didn't know that G.o.dfrey was dead as to something beautiful and far away.

Angel was in the garden, sitting with her work in Miss Jane's arbour.

There was so much work to be done, and poor old Penny cried so bitterly over the black stuff that her damp needle and thread didn't get on very fast, and Angel took it quietly away from her and carried it out of doors. Penny had a sort of idea that there was something wrong in sewing at mourning dresses in the garden, but Angel thought it didn't matter. Betty felt as if the glory of the spring-time, the flowers in the borders and the birds' song and the vivid green of the meadows, were like a mockery of their grief, but to Angel the sunny sweetness brought a strange comfort which she did not try to understand. Martha had promised to come round and help her, but it was afternoon now and she had not come. She was very busy at home, Angel supposed, but still it was not like her not to keep an appointment when she had said she would come. Betty sat on the gra.s.s at her sister's feet. She had her work, too, but it did not get on very fast. She laid it down at last and leaned back against the stone shoulder of Demoiselle Jehanne, much as she had been used to do in the days when she was a little girl and used to come to her for comfort. There was something about the peacefulness of the still figure under the flowers which soothed Betty still, she hardly knew how. She remembered, almost with a smile, how G.o.dfrey had always believed that Miss Jane's heart was broken by a naughty nephew, and he had been so afraid of the same thing happening to her and Angel. She had almost come to believe in the story herself, and as her fingers strayed half caressingly over the familiar broken face she wondered how Miss Jane felt when she was a living, loving, sorrowing woman here at Oakfield. Did she know about the dreary blank, the aching longing which had come to the little girls who used to play beside her? And a hundred years hence would it matter as little to any one that G.o.dfrey lay under the tossing Channel waters as it did to-day that a sad woman's heart had broken long ago? A timid step on the path made them look up, and there stood Nancy, waiting with much less a.s.surance than usual for them to notice her. Angel held out her hand.

'Well, Nancy dear,' she said, 'where is your mother?'