I know not if this was right--but it was scarcely unnatural.In that heart,which loved as few men love,and remembered as few men remember,so deep a wound could never be thoroughly healed.Acertain something in him seemed different ever after,as if a portion of the father's own life had been taken away with Muriel,and lay buried in the little dead bosom of his first-born,his dearest child.
"You forget,"said Mrs.Halifax,tenderly--"you forget,John,how much you have been doing,and intend to do.What with your improvements at Enderley,and your Catholic Emancipation--your Abolition of Slavery and your Parliamentary Reform--why,there is hardly any scheme for good,public or private,to which you do not lend a helping hand.""A helping purse,perhaps,which is an easier thing,much.""I will not have you blaming yourself.Ask Phineas,there--our household Solomon.""Thank you,Ursula,"said I,submitting to the not rare fortune of being loved and laughed at.
"Uncle Phineas,what better could John have done in all these years,than look after his mills and educate his three sons?""Have them educated,rather,"corrected he,sensitive over his own painfully-gained and limited acquirements.Yet this feeling had made him doubly careful to give his boys every possible advantage of study,short of sending them from home,to which he had an invincible objection.And three finer lads,or better educated,there could not be found in the whole country.
"I think,John,Guy has quite got over his fancy of going to Cambridge with Ralph Oldtower.""Yes;college life would not have done for Guy,"said the father thoughtfully.
"Hush!we must not talk about them,for here come the children."It was now a mere figure of speech to call them so,though in their home-taught,loving simplicity,they would neither have been ashamed nor annoyed at the epithet--these two tall lads,who in the dusk looked as man-like as their father.
"Where is your sister,boys?"
"Maud stopped at the stream with Edwin,"answered Guy,rather carelessly.His heart had kept its childish faith;the youngest,pet as she was,was never anything to him but "little Maud."One--whom the boys still talked of,softly and tenderly,in fireside evening talks,when the winter winds came and the snow was falling--one only was ever spoken of by Guy as "sister."Maud,or Miss Halifax,as from the first she was naturally called--as naturally as our lost darling was never called anything else than Muriel--came up,hanging on Edwin's arm,which she was fond of doing,both because it happened to be the only arm low enough to suit her childish stature,and because she was more especially "Edwin's girl,"and had been so always.She had grown out of the likeness that we longed for in her cradle days,or else we had grown out of the perception of it;for though the external resemblance in hair and complexion still remained,nothing could be more unlike in spirit than this sprightly elf,at once the plague and pet of the family--to our Muriel.
"Edwin's girl"stole away with him,merrily chattering.Guy sat down beside his mother,and slipped his arm round her waist.They still fondled her with a child-like simplicity--these her almost grown-up sons;who had never been sent to school for a day,and had never learned from other sons of far different mothers,that a young man's chief manliness ought to consist in despising the tender charities of home.
"Guy,you foolish boy!"as she took his cap off and pushed back his hair,trying not to look proud of his handsome face,"what have you been doing all day?""Making myself agreeable,of course,mother.""That he has,"corroborated Walter,whose great object of hero-worship was his eldest brother."He talked with Lady Oldtower,and he sang with Miss Oldtower and Miss Grace.Never was there such a fellow as our Guy.""Nonsense!"said his mother,while Guy only laughed,too accustomed to this family admiration to be much disconcerted or harmed thereby.
"When does Ralph return to Cambridge?"
"Not at all.He is going to leave college,and be off to help the Greeks.Father,do you know everybody is joining the Greeks?Even Lord Byron is off with the rest.I only wish I were.""Heaven forbid!"muttered the mother.
"Why not?I should have made a capital soldier,and liked it too,better than anything.""Better than being my right hand at the mills,and your mother's at home?--Better than growing up to be our eldest son,our comfort and our hope?--I think not,Guy.""You are right,father,"was the answer,with an uneasy look.For this description seemed less what Guy was than what we desired him to be.With his easy,happy temper,generous but uncertain,and his showy,brilliant parts,he was not nearly so much to be depended on as the grave Edwin,who was already a thorough man of business,and plodded between Enderley mills and a smaller one which had taken the place of the flour mill at Norton Bury,with indomitable perseverance.
Guy fell into a brown study,not unnoticed by those anxious eyes,which lingered oftener upon his face than on that of any of her sons.
Mrs.Halifax said,in her quick,decisive way,that it was "time to go in."So the sunset picture outside changed to the home-group within;the mother sitting at her little table,where the tall silver candlestick shed a subdued light on her work-basket,that never was empty,and her busy fingers,that never were still.The father sat beside her;he kept his old habit of liking to have her close to him;ay,even though he was falling into the middle-aged comforts of an arm-chair and newspaper.There he sat,sometimes reading aloud,or talking;sometimes lazily watching her,with silent,loving eyes,that saw beauty in his old wife still.