Guy started,but still he kept his seat.The mother took her grandchild in her feeble arms,and kissed her,saying softly,"There--that is Uncle Guy.Go and speak to him."And then,touching his knees,Guy felt the tiny,fearless hand.He turned round,and looked at the little thing,reluctantly,inquisitively.Still he did not speak to or touch her.
"Are you Uncle Guy?"
"Yes."
"Why don't you kiss me?Everybody kisses me,"said everybody's pet;neither frightened nor shy;never dreaming of a repulse.
Nor did she find it.Her little fingers were suffered to cling round the tightly-closed hand.
"What is your name,my dear?"
"Louise--mamma's little Louise."
Guy put back the curls,and gazed long and wistfully into the childish face,where the inherited beauty was repeated line for line.
But softened,spiritualised,as,years after its burial,some ghost of a man's old sorrows may rise up and meet him,the very spirit of peace shining out of its celestial eyes.
"Little Louise,you are very like--"
He stopped--and bending down,kissed her.In that kiss vanished for ever the last shadow of his boyhood's love.Not that he forgot it--God forbid that any good man should ever either forget or be ashamed of his first love!But it and all its pain fled far away,back into the sacred eternities of dreamland.
When,looking up at last,he saw a large,fair,matronly lady sitting by his mother's sofa,Guy neither started nor turned pale.It was another,and not his lost Louise.He rose and offered her his hand.
"You see,your little daughter has made friends with me already.She is very like you;only she has Edwin's hair.Where is my brother Edwin?""Here,old fellow.Welcome home."
The two brothers met warmly,nay,affectionately.Edwin was not given to demonstration;but I saw how his features twitched,and how he busied himself over the knots in his little girl's pinafore for a minute or more.When he spoke again it was as if nothing had happened and Guy had never been away.
For the mother,she lay with her arms folded,looking from one to the other mutely,or closing her eyes with a faint stirring of the lips,like prayer.It seemed as if she dared only THUS to meet her exceeding joy.
Soon,Edwin and Louise left us for an hour or two,and Guy went on with the history of his life in America and his partner who had come home with him,and,like himself,had lost his all.
"Harder for him than for me;he is older than I am.He knew nothing whatever of business when he offered himself as my clerk;since then he has worked like a slave.In a fever I had he nursed me;he has been to me these three years the best,truest friend.He is the noblest fellow.Father,if you only knew--""Well,my son,let me know him.Invite the gentleman to Beechwood;or shall I write and ask him?Maud,fetch me your mother's desk.
Now then,Guy--you are a very forgetful fellow still;you have never yet told us your friend's name."Guy looked steadily at his father,in his own straightforward way;hesitated--then apparently made up his mind.
"I did not tell you because he wished me not;not till you understood him as well as I do.You knew him yourself once--but he has wisely dropped his title.Since he came over to me in America he has been only Mr.William Ravenel."This discovery--natural enough when one began to think over it,but incredible at first,astounded us all.For Maud--well was it that the little Louise seated in her lap hid and controlled in some measure the violent agitation of poor Auntie Maud.
Ay--Maud loved him.Perhaps she had guessed the secret cause of his departure,and love creates love often times.Then his brave renunciation of rank,fortune,even of herself--women glory in a moral hero--one who has strength to lose even love,and bear its loss,for the sake of duty or of honour.His absence,too,might have done much:--absence which smothers into decay a rootless fancy,but often nourishes the least seed of a true affection into full-flowering love.Ay--Maud loved him.How,or why,or when,at first no one could tell--perhaps not even herself;but so it was,and her parents saw it.
Both were deeply moved--her brother likewise.
"Father,"he whispered,"have I done wrong?I did not know--how could I guess?""No,no--my son.It is very strange--all things just now seem so strange.Maud,my child,"--and John roused himself out of a long silence into which he was falling,--"go,and take Louise to her mother."The girl rose,eager to get away.As she crossed the room--the little creature clinging round her neck,and she clasping it close,in the sweet motherliness of character which had come to her so early--I thought--I hoped--"Maud!"said John,catching her hand as she passed him by--"Maud is not afraid of her father?""No,"--in troubled uncertainty--then with a passionate decision,as if ashamed of herself--"No!"
She leaned over his chair-back and kissed him--then went out.
"Now--Guy."
Guy told,in his own frank way,all the history of himself and William Ravenel;how the latter had come to America,determined to throw his lot for good or ill,to sink or swim,with Maud's brother--chiefly,as Guy had slowly discovered,because he was Maud's brother.
At last--in the open boat,on the Atlantic,with death the great revealer of all things staring them in the face--the whole secret came out.It made them better than friends--brothers.
This was Guy's story,told with a certain spice of determination too,as if--let his father's will be what it might,his own,which had now also settled into the strong "family"will,was resolute on his friend's behalf.Yet when he saw how grave,nay sad,the father sat,he became humble again,and ended his tale even as he had begun,with the entreaty--"Father,if you only knew--""My knowing and my judging seem to have been of little value,my son.