Read Ebook: Wayfaring Men: A Novel by Lyall Edna

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Ebook has 2939 lines and 143473 words, and 59 pages

"Well, my boy," he said with a kindly greeting, "I'm glad to see you. You'll not remember me for you were but a little fellow when I was last here. Let me see, they call you Raphe, don't they?"

"Not Raphe, but Ralph," said the boy, and into his mind there darted the recollection of a scene that had once been funny but now seemed pathetic, of a discussion upon his name between his father and two old antiquaries, and of how one of them had patted him on the head with the gruff-voiced injunction, "If any one calls you 'Raphe' tell him he's a fool."

It was impossible to call such a man as Sir Matthew a fool, and the boy turned to greet the lawyer, and was surprised to find that unlike the typical solicitor of fiction he was a very noble looking man of the old school, gentle and courtly in manner, and evidently understanding how embarrassing the interview must be to a lad of thirteen.

"Sit down, Ralph," said Sir Matthew, motioning him to a chair, "there are several things I must talk to you about."

Ralph obeyed, not without a curious sensation at being ordered about in his own home by a perfect stranger. "Mr. Marriott and I," resumed his godfather, "have been looking into your father's affairs on our way from London, and as a matter of fact they were pretty well known to me before. I grieve to say, my boy, that he has left you quite unprovided for."

"I--I knew," said Ralph, "that father had lost a great deal of money lately--it was through some company that failed: he told me he never would have speculated, but he wanted very much to make money and send me to Winchester and then to Oxford; he couldn't do that, you know, only out of the living. But he blamed himself for having done it; he said it was no better than gambling."

Sir Matthew had paced up and down the room restlessly during this speech, he seemed to be moved by it, and it was the lawyer who first broke the silence. "You are happy," he said to Ralph, "in having the memory of a father who was just enough to recognise his own mistakes, and noble enough to confess them. Be warned, my boy, and never in the future dabble in speculation."

Sir Matthew returned to his former position on the hearthrug. "In the meantime," he said with displeasure in his tone, "his more useful study will be how to live in the present."

"That," said Mr. Marriott gravely, "is a matter which you, Sir Matthew, will no doubt help him to consider."

Ralph, with a child's quick consciousness that something lay beneath these words which he did not altogether understand, glanced from one to the other in some perplexity. He saw that Sir Matthew was angry with the lawyer, and that the lawyer disapproved somehow of Sir Matthew.

"I wish Mr. Marriott had been my godfather," he thought to himself. "I like him twice as well. Sir Matthew orders one about as though he bossed the whole world."

And then, as often happens, he was forced to modify his rather severe criticism of his godfather, for Sir Matthew with a genuinely kind glance drew him nearer, and laying a hand on his shoulder, said in the most genial of voices:

"Don't you be afraid, my boy, I'll see you through your trouble. Leave everything to me. We'll have you a Wykehamist as I know your father wished, and then make a parson of you, eh?"

"Oh no, thank you," said Ralph, "I couldn't be a clergyman, I don't want to be that at all."

"Eh! What! you have already some other idea? Come tell me, for it's a real help to know what a boy's tastes are."

"I want to be an actor," said Ralph quietly.

"What!" cried Sir Matthew. "Go on the stage? Oh, that's just a passing fancy. No gentleman can take up play-acting as a profession. No, no, I don't send you to Winchester to fit you for such a trumpery calling as that. If you'll not be a parson what do you say to trying for the Indian Civil Service? I'm much mistaken if you have not very good abilities, and for a man who has to make his own way in the world, why India is the right place."

"I should like to go to India," said Ralph, thinking of certain tales of jungle life and thrilling adventures with man-eating tigers that he had lately read.

"Very well," said Sir Matthew briskly, "that's decided then. To Winchester for six years, then a choice of the Church or the Indian Civil Service. There's your future my boy, and I will see you fairly started in life whichever line you choose. To-morrow you shall come back with me to London, so run off now and let them get your things together, and Mr. Marriott and I will make all the necessary arrangements with regard to your father's effects."

Not sorry to be dismissed, Ralph made his way upstairs, where he found the housekeeper already busy with his packing. She made him collect what few possessions he had, two or three pictures, some tools, some books and a toy boat; but what she termed "the rubbish," such as bird's eggs, mosses, fossils, imperfect models of engines, and such like, she entirely declined to handle. "The rubbish" must be left, and Ralph with an odd sinking of the heart, as he remembered how short was the time remaining to him, began his sad round of farewells. He stole quietly up to the attic from which the harbour could best be seen, and watched the stately ships going into port. Then he walked through the garden with lingering steps; he had worked in it with his father so long and so happily that every plant was dear to him; to leave it just now in this May weather, when the Gloire de Dijon on the south wall was covered with exquisite roses, when the snapdragons, which as a little fellow he had delighted in feeding with spoonfuls of sugar and water, were just coming into flower, when the bedding-out plants, which but three weeks ago they had planted were actually in bloom--this was hard indeed! Could it be only three weeks since that half-holiday when, with no thought of coming trouble, they had worked so merrily together?

Passing through the green lauristinus arch he paced slowly on between the strawberry-beds now white with blossom. That Saturday had been their last really happy day, for the next morning's post had brought the news of his father's great losses, and though the Sunday's work had been struggled through, the Rector had never been the same again, the burdened look had never left his face.

Ralph thought it all over as he rested his arms on the little iron gate leading into the glebe, his eyes wandering sadly over that distant view which he had always loved, with its stretch of gorse and heather, and to the right the beautiful woods of Whinhaven park, just now in the full perfection of their spring tints. Well, it was all over now, and the place was to pass into the hands of strangers, and somehow he must get through his goodbyes. Making his way to the stable, he flung his arms about the neck of old Forester the pony, choked back a sob in his throat as he unfastened Skipper the Irish terrier, and picking up in his arms a scared-looking white cat, ran at full speed down the drive, across the common, with its golden gorse and dark fir trees, until he reached the coastguard station. Beneath the flag-staff, with a telescope tucked under his arm, there stood a cheery-looking official in trim reefer and gold-laced cap. It was Langston--the head of the coastguard station, and one of Ralph's best friends.

"I have come to say good-bye, for to-morrow I'm going to London," said the boy hurriedly. "And I want to give you Skipper, if you care to have him. He's of a very good breed, father said, and he's an awfully friendly dog. And if you had room for Toots as well I should be awfully obliged. I know he's not worth anything, and ever since Benjamin was lost Toots has been sort of queer, always mewing and roaming about looking for him. But I think if you buttered his feet he would stay, and he's a real good mouser."

Langston promised to adopt both dog and cat, but he would not allow all the giving to be on one side. He went into his house and returned in a few minutes with a little pocket compass.

"I'll ask you to accept that, Master Ralph," he said, as he gripped the boy's hand in a friendly grasp. "You'll maybe have rough times in life, but steer well, my lad, steer well, and be the man your father would have had you."

"How does one steer if one doesn't know which is the right way to go?" said Ralph with a sigh.

"Why it's then that you'll hear your captain's orders," said the coastguardsman. "Cheer up, Master Ralph, it don't all depend on the man at the wheel."

"Ill is that angel which erst fell from heaven,

But not more ill than he, nor in worse case,

Who hides a traitorous mind with smiling face,

And with a dove's white feather masks a raven,

Each sin some colour hath it to adorn.

Hypocrisy, Almighty God doth scorn."

Wm. Drummond, 1616.

|Dinner proved a trying meal that evening, although Sir Matthew and Mr. Marriott exerted themselves to talk, and were both of them very kind to their small companion. Afterwards they adjourned once more to the study where for the sake of the old lawyer a fire had been lighted.

"The nights are still cold," he said drawing a chair towards the hearth, and warming his thin white hands; "May is but a treacherous month in spite of the good things the poets say of it. I understand that your father's illness was caused by a chill," he added, glancing kindly at Ralph.

"He caught cold one night when they sent for him down in the village," said Ralph, tears starting to his eyes. "He was called up at two o'clock to see a man who was dying: there was an east wind, he said it seemed to go right through him. But then you know he had been very much troubled because of his losses; for the last ten days he had scarcely eaten anything, and had slept badly."

Sir Matthew paced the room restlessly, but when he spoke his voice was bland and calm.

"A noble end!" he said, "dying in harness like that; carrying comfort to the dying and then lying down upon his own death-bed; a very noble end."

Something in the tone of this speech grated on Ralph, he shrank a little closer to the lawyer.

"Why do I hate him?" thought the boy. "He's going to send me to Winchester with his own money, I ought to like him, but I can't--I can't!"

At that moment old Mrs. Grice appeared at the door asking to speak with Mr. Marriott. He followed her into the hall returning in a minute or two and approaching Ralph.

"My boy," he said, laying a kindly hand on his shoulder, "if you want to see your father's face again it must be now."

Together they went up the dimly lighted staircase to the room overhead, Sir Matthew following slowly and with reluctance, a strange expression lurking about the corners of his mouth. Many thoughts passed through his mind as he stood looking down upon the still features of his dead friend; if the pale lips could have spoken he well knew they might have reproached him; and yet it was less painful to him to look at the stern face of the dead, than to watch the grief of the little lad as, through fast falling tears he gazed for the last time on his father's face. It was a relief to him when the old lawyer drew the boy gently away, and persuaded him to return to the study fire.

"I will be good to his son," thought Sir Matthew as he looked once more at the silent form. "I will make it up to Ralph. He shall have the education his father would have given him. And then he must shift for himself, I shall have done my duty, and he must sink or swim. The very sight of him annoys me, but it will be only for a few years, and, meantime, I must put up with it."

So Ralph for the last time slept in the only home he had ever known, and woke the next day to endure as best he might all the last painful ceremonies through which it was necessary that he should bear his part. When the funeral was over he left Sir John Tresidder to talk with the lawyer and Sir Matthew, and drew Mab away into a sheltered nook of the walled kitchen garden where stood a rabbit-hutch.

"These are the only things left," he said, mournfully. "Should you care to have them, Mab? I should like them to be at Westbrook for I know you would be good to them. Rabbi Ben Ezra is the best rabbit that ever lived, and he'll soon get to care for you. Sarah Jane is rather dull, but I suppose he likes her, and she doesn't eat her little ones or do anything horrid of that sort like some rabbits."

"I will take no end of care of them," said Mab; "but it seems a pity that you should leave them. Could you not take them with you?"

"If I were going to live with Mr. Marriott I wouldn't mind asking leave," said Ralph, "but there's something about Sir Matthew--I don't know what it is--but one can't ask a favour of him. I'd far rather give up the rabbits."

"Perhaps you are right," said Mab. "And by the bye Ralph, let me have your new address, you are to live with your guardian are you not?"

"They say Sir Matthew is not exactly my guardian. But father's will was made many years ago and he was named as sole executor, and father wrote to him the day before he died asking him to see to me. Here comes the man to say your carriage is ready."

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