“Nobody knows, Marie-Celeste. He is supposed to have been a soldier in the Roman Army, and to have killed a monstrous dragon that no one else could overcome, and at last, after being dreadfully tortured for his faith in Christianity, he is also supposed to have died a martyr's death.”
“'Is supposed' isn't very satisfactory, Harold.”
“No, it isn't; but it can't be helped. Indeed, they knew so little about him way back even in the fifth century, that one of the popes, when he made up a list of the saints, said 'he was one of those whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose actions are known only to God.'”
“You talk just like a book,” remarked Donald, to whom Harold, with his knowledge of men and things, was a never-ceasing wonder.
“And good reason why, for I got it out of a book. Don't you remember I told you I'd studied up about it?”
“Oh, yes,” as though thankful there was some sort of explanation for such uncanny erudition.
“But how does this St. George come to be mixed up with the Knights of the Garter?” asked Marie-Celeste.
“This is the way of it. You know what the Crusades were?” Marie-Celeste nodded yes, but intimating, with a significant glance in the direction of Donald and Albert, that probably they did not, Harold took the hint, and began over again.
“Well, ever so many years ago great armies of men went out from England to try and get possession of the Holy Land, and each time an army went out they called it a crusade, and on the first one the leader of the army prayed to St. George to help him, and as he was very successful, that made St. George's name very famous. Then afterward Richard Cour de Lion, when he went to the Holy Land, put himself under St. George's protection, and from that time he became the patron saint of England, and that means, Albert” (for Albert looked the question he longed to ask), “that England regarded him as the saint who would help her most and be her special guardian.”
“Yes,” said Marie-Celeste, since Harold apparently considered he had come to a natural pause in the narrative; “but you haven't told us what St. George and the Knights of the Garter have to do with each other.”
“So I haven't; well, all the connection that I know of is, that every year a feast in honor of St. George was ordered to be kept as a holiday, and that the Order of the Garter was founded on that day—St. George's Day—and that so the Cross of St. George and the Garter of the Knights came to be a sort of double emblem for the order.”
By this time the children had reached the Norman Gate, and crossing the quadrangle, Harold led the way into the State apartments, and being well known to most of the guides of the castle, was allowed, with his little party, to pass on unattended, and to make his way straight to the Grand Banqueting Hall. From the moment they entered the castle, Donald was of no use as far as receiving instruction was concerned. This being his first visit to any castle whatever, he was far too much astonished and overawed by everything he saw to be able to think of applying his mind to mere historical detail.
Let Harold hold forth as eloquently as he chose about this old knight or that old armor, for him there might never be another visit to this wonderful place, and he was going to see it all in his own way. Harold and Marie-Celeste were at first very much disgusted at his utter disregard of the object of their visit, but disgust gradually gave way to amusement, and the tale of the chivalrous old knights was even suspended for awhile, that they might watch the little fellow's peculiar methods of letting nothing escape him. Gazing in rapt wonder, he moved from one point to another, wholly absorbed in his surroundings, and oblivious to the presence of any one beside himself. Now he was standing in admiration before the great oak chair of State beneath the organ gallery, and now nothing loath he mounts the steps that lead to it and runs a finger along the curves of its elaborate carving, and then, with a most reverent air, touches the embroidered cross and garter with which it is decorated. All this is making very free with State belongings, and one of the guides, in charge of a small party of visitors, starts toward him in a decidedly menacing manner; but Harold intercepts him and explains, and the guide, himself much amused, decides to leave unmolested this gallant little tar of Her Majesty's. And now Donald seeks out a corner of the room and deliberately stretches himself on the floor, clasping his hands under the back of his head. This is done the better to take in the elaborate ceiling, decorated as it is with the armorial bearings of the knights of five centuries, and now, with arm upraised and extended finger, he is entering into some mathematical calculation of his own in connection with the banners that hang just beneath the ceiling. And now what does the boy do but suddenly exchange his vertical position for one quite the reverse, and turn all his attention to the carpet; for did not Harold say it was woven in some special way on purpose? Yes, sure enough! here is the Cross of St. George in the centre of each little panel, and here—crossing to the edge of the room—the beautiful circle of the gaiter worked into the design of the border. Oh, but it is a wonderful place! and there are probably other rooms just as wonderful; so a little closer look at the brass shields and the helmets, and the portraits of the sovereigns ranged along one side, and then, wholly unsuspicious of any disapproval, he walks over to the children and remarks “that now he would like to see the other rooms, please.” His delight in it all, and naïve unconsciousness of anything unusual in his behavior, are altogether irresistible, and Harold and Marie-Celeste, after a whispered conference, decide to suspend Knight-of-the-Garter reminiscences for the time being, and make the tour of the castle with him. Albert, who has found much of Harold's narration quite beyond him, but has “never let on” for one moment, hails the announcement with great inward rejoicing, and the little quartette make their way to the Guard Chamber, as the place next in interest. In every room Donald brings his own peculiar methods of investigation to bear, not in the least minding a good deal of mirthful laughter at his expense on the part of Harold and Marie-Celeste; and Albert, feeling privileged to join in the general merriment, though evidently half the time without in anywise appreciating the situation, only helps on the jollity of things. Then when at noon, by special permission of a very lenient guardsman, the children establish themselves for luncheon on a terrace beneath the shade of the Round Tower, Marie-Celeste and Albert and Harold agree that they had never had such fun—never!
“Well, you may call it fun,” says Donald, quite willing that they should, “but I call it something better than that. The grandest time I ever had, that's what I call it.”
But all the sights were not seen yet, and for the members of the little party who still adhered to the Knight-of-the-Garter research the best was yet to come, in St. George's Chapel. Entering at the door at the south front and crossing to the centre, the children passed directly into the choir, which is really a chapel in itself, and to them of special interest, because the very place where the ceremony of installing' the knights is performed. Harold led the way to the farther end, and they took their seats on the steps of the chancel. Behind them the light fell softly through the stained glass of the window over the altar; above them waved the knights' silken banners, and just below each banner hung the sword, mantle, and helmet of the knight whose crest it bore, mounted against a background of elaborate carving. It was of course the spot of spots for any one who, like Harold, had been initiated into all the mysteries by being present at an installation, and he did justice to the occasion. By this time even Donald, whose powers of endurance were not yet of the strongest, was content to sit by, an apparent listener; but much that Harold had to tell having little interest for him, he resorted to that little trick to which some discriminating ears readily lend themselves, of listening to what appealed to him and letting the rest go. With Albert matters were reversed. He had completely lapsed from his humble estate of the morning, when he felt in duty bound to at least pretend to be an attentive listener, and when they reached the chapel, already such a familiar place to him, he no longer even tried to keep up appearances. A great big collie belonging to the verger, Mr. Brown, sometimes made so bold as to steal in “unbeknownst” and curl up on the cool marble in a dark corner of the choir, and Albert, who knew the corner well, at once slipped away in the hope of finding him.
Yes, there he was in the old place—dear, audacious old Timothy, stretched close along the wall in the deep shadow of the Oueen's own stall, as though well aware that it was the one spot where he might reasonably expect to escape observation.
“Hush, Timothy,” said Albert, approaching him on tiptoe; but the warning was quite unnecessary. Nothing was farther from Timothy's thoughts than to make any disturbance whatever—why should he? Were they not the best of friends, he and that blessed little Albert? so he never raised his head from where it rested upon his outstretched paws, only looked up with that gaze of implicit confidence peculiar to the kind eyes of the Laverick setter, and which made Albert lose not a second in spreading his little coat out beneath him, throwing his two arms around Timothy's neck, and pillowing his head on his beautiful silky coat. Now, it is not granted to Laverick setters to purr in pussy's demonstrative fashion, but they have a subdued little grateful purr of their own, distinctly audible to an ear placed as close as Albert's chanced to be, and Timothy at once indulged in the same. Outwardly, however, not a sound was to be heard. Only the experienced eye and ear could appreciate how intense were the depths of his canine satisfaction.
“We've had an awful good time this morning, Timothy,” Albert confided in a whisper; “we've been all over the castle, learning 'bout Knights of the Garter. Harold knows an awful lot about 'em, but I'm tired of 'em, an' I don't care to hear any more. I'd rather stay here wid you, Timothy. There, please move that paw a little—that's it; now, Timothy, keep very still! Please, please don't snap for that fly, or they'll hear you; still! still, Timothy, while I stroke your head like this, till, till—” and the subject was dropped indefinitely.
“Now, if there are any questions you would like to ask?” said Harold, for, dear as was the subject to him, he really could think of nothing more to tell.
“Indeed there are,” said Marie-Celeste, who had conscientiously tried not to interrupt, though there were a dozen lines along which she desired information.
“First, will you tell me if they ever let the ladies have any part in all the feasting and good times you have told about?”
“Oh, yes! There was a time when the wives of the knights were called Ladies of the Society of the Garter, and they used to be allowed to wear violet-colored or white cloth robes 'furred,' as one old book says, and embroidered with garters. The number of garters depended on their rank. But in the reign of King Henry the Eighth, for some reason that branch of the order was given up. By the way, Henry the Eighth is buried just yonder,” pointing a few feet away. “There's a royal vault right under those tiles, and Charles the First, whose head Cromwell cut off, is buried there too.”
“You don't mean it!” for Donald was all attention the second there was anything so thrilling as cut-off heads in the wind.
“Now, there's another thing I'd like to know,” said Marie-Celeste, “and that is, how long do they let a knight's banner hang there? because when a new knight is made his banner has to be put up somewhere.”
“Yes, of course; and so when a man dies they take away everything except the brass plate at the back of the stall that belonged to him, and that has his name on and all his titles.”
“I like the American way of not having any titles,” said Donald; “seems to me they're an awful fuss and bother. Of course you don't believe in them, Marie-Celeste.”
“Well, I don't exactly care for the titles and such a ridiculous lot of letters coming after one's name, but I should think it would be nice to know who your greatest grandfather was, and that he was a gentleman into the bargain, for that's what some of the titles mean, you know. They've come down from father to son for centuries.”
“I'd be satisfied just to know who my own father was,” said Donald with a sigh, and Marie-Celeste wished she had not said anything to bring that sad fact to mind.
“Did you say, Harold,” she asked, by way of quickly changing the subject, “that Edward the Third, who founded the Order of the Carter, built this chapel?”
“No; but I said that the chapel that he did build and dedicated to St. George stood right where this choir is now. This chapel was commenced a hundred years later, and the old one torn down.”
“Well,” said Donald, getting onto his feet, “one way and another I've learned a great deal to-day—just about as much as I can hold, seems to me.”
“Yes, I'm tired, too,” Marie-Celeste admitted; “but we're ever so much obliged, it's been very interesting; but look here, Donald, before we go, I want to show you something,” and she led the way to a stall of one of the knights.
“See,” said Marie-Celeste, pushing the seat of the stall from beneath, so that it folded up against the back, thereby bringing to view a queer little wooden projection about six inches wide.
“Now, Donald, will you believe that is all the seat the old knights used to have in these stalls? They've preserved them in this way just as a curiosity. Things are more comfortable for them now, you see, but in the old times they were afraid the knights would go to sleep during the service, and so made them uncomfortable to keep them awake.”
“Not a bad idea,” mused Donald, as though he had more than once in his life experienced a similar temptation.
“Well, I think it was, then,” said Marie-Celeste decidedly. “This church is enough in itself to keep a man awake if he has any thoughts to think, no matter how dull the sermon might happen to be; but then I know”—with an insinuating shrug of the shoulders—“some men, and boys too I suppose, never do have any thoughts to think. If they're not eating or being amused, sleep's the only thing for them.”
There was a whimsical little look in Donald's face, which an American street gamin would have interpreted as “what are you giving us?” He did not say anything, however; and just then Harold, who had strolled on by himself, came toward them, his face aglow with merriment. “I believe”—speaking to Donald—“you said you'd like to see a live Knight of the Garter; now come right along quickly and I'll show you one.”
What could he mean? Donald and Marie-Celeste elbowed each other in their haste to discover, and in the next moment sure enough there he was right before them. He was only a little knight, to be sure, not over four, and sound asleep at that, with one arm thrown around a big dog, who was also sound asleep. A knight he was, however, beyond all dispute, for there was the unmistakable blue garter plainly visible, and in exactly the right place, too, on the left leg just below the knee. He had not meant that any one should know it, such a modest little knight was he; but alas! the weakness of drowsiness had overtaken the valiant little fellow, and in the disorder thereon attendant the shapely little limb had thrust itself forth from the folds of the protecting kilt, and there was the garter plainly visible to the most casual passer-by.
“Yes, will you believe it?” said Marie-Celeste, stooping down for closer inspection, “'Honi soit qui mal y pense,' as large as life in gold letters running all round it—just as near the real thing as possible.”
Donald and Harold were on the eve of laughing outright, but Marie-Celeste, detecting a suspicious blinking in the long curling lashes of the eyelids, kept them still by an imperative gesture.
“Yes, ladies and gentlemen,” she said, imitating exactly old Brown's tone and accent when showing visitors through the chapel, “this is a monument erected to the memory of a knight who was killed in battle, together with his noble palfrey. It represents him as he was found, one arm around the neck of his faithful charger” (at this the knight's lips also betrayed a certain uncontrollable twitching). “The smile upon his face is considered one of the chief charms of the statue; but the way that we know that he is a knight—in fact, the only way—is by this blue garter around his knee.” At this the little limb was suddenly drawn up, that the tell-tale garter might be hid from view; and then, able to stand it no longer, Albert looked up entreatingly to the children above him, and blushingly explained, “Dorothy made it for me, just for a bit of fun, you know;” and then sure to a certainty that he never, never would hear the end of that blue garter, buried his blushes in Timothy's long silky coat, and rued the hour when Dorothy had so merrily abetted his desire for this particular “bit of fun.”
I am convinced this is not the best sort of life for Donald. It would be vastly better for him to have something to do.”
“But surely he is not yet in a condition to go to sea again, and it is next to impossible to find any temporary position for him in Windsor.”
Mr. and Mrs. Harris were out for a drive behind Harold's chestnut ponies, and, as usual, when something important had need to be talked over, the ponies did pretty much as they liked, and that meant, I am ashamed to say (for they were quite too young to so much as think of being lazy), keeping up the merest pretence of a trot for a while, and then subsiding into a walk altogether.
Mr. and Mrs. Harris, apparently none the wiser, talked on and on, and the ponies put their heads together, as though actually conferring as to the advisability of stopping to graze a little while by the way.
“You see, this sort of life is too luxurious for the fellow,” argued Mr. Harris. “It was well enough while he needed care and nursing, but the boy has always had to rough it, and he'll have to rough it again; and I think we're unfitting him for it.”
“But what can we do? It is better for him to be idle here with us, it seems to me, than in some ordinary lodging-house, where things, to be sure, are not by any means luxurious, but where a boy who is not at work meets with so many temptations.”
“I wonder if it would not be a good idea to write Chris Hartley? He told me his grandfather has a snug little place and several head of stock, and, like as not, Donald would make himself of use, or, at any rate, Chris could keep him occupied in some way, and we could pay his board for him there. He won't be strong enough to put to sea before September, that's certain.”
“That's a splendid idea, Fritz; you always seem to be able to construct some sort of a highroad out of every difficulty;” and Mr. Harris said, “Thank you, madam,” with an affectation of profound gratitude; but for all that he was none the less truly grateful. We are a little too apt, most of us, to assume too much with our nearest and dearest—to take for granted that they know all the thoughts of our heart, and so seldom put our praise of them into words. But what a mistake! Is there anything so precious in all this world as the openly expressed admiration of the people we really love? No matter how one pretends to receive it, it makes one feel very happy at heart all the same, and humble and grateful as well. You'd forgive this bit of what the critics call moralizing—it is all the outcome of that remark of Mrs. Harris's; nothing was further from my thoughts until she put it into my head by giving Mr. Harris that unexpected little compliment. It was the truth, however. He did have a genius for overcoming difficulties, instead of being overcome by them; and the particular difficulty of what had best be none with Donald being temporarily settled, they proceeded to give themselves wholly to the pleasure of the drive. They readjusted things in the comfortable little phaeton and tucked the lap-robe about them in trimmer fashion, and then the ponies, feeling a tightening grasp on the lines, and intuitively conscious of a whip poised at an easily descending angle, wisely saw fit to make up for lost time. Along the perfect English road they scampered, and out to Virginia Water, at the merriest pace, and then home again at a better pace still, so alluring to their pony imaginations were the box stalls and oats that lay in that direction. They only wished so much time did not have to be wasted after they reached there. How thoughtless it was to walk a pony, who had just come in from a long drive, up and down a lane for half an hour, just for the sake of giving a groom a little exercise! They did protest with their heels now and then, but that only meant a closer, more uncomfortable grip on the halter, and made matters rather worse than better. And so what wonder, with all this fuss and senseless bother, that Mr. Harris had written and mailed a letter to Mr. Christopher Hartley before the ponies had gotten so much as their noses within their own box stalls! As for the letter, you would have thought it harmless enough could you have looked over Mr. Harris's shoulder as he wrote it. It simply related the facts about Donald, and asked if old Mr. and Mrs. Hartley would not be good enough to take him to board for the rest of the summer, and if Chris would not contrive to keep him occupied about the farm in some way that should not overtax his newly gained strength. That was all there was in it, and yet can you not surmise how even that letter was calculated to work great consternation in the mind of some one in the little thatched cottage—some one who never saw the letter itself, and who did not so much as know of its existence until it had been read and re-read and thought over and answered, but who when one day he was made acquainted with its contents felt as weak as a kitten for hours afterward? He happened to be lying on the lounge in the living-room at the time, the same lounge to which he had been carried more dead than alive apparently, just four weeks before. He looked very pale and white still, but the doctor said he was getting on as fast as could be expected, only Ted—for of course it is Ted we are talking about—wished he might have been expected to get on just five times faster. He had had a great deal of time to think during the first part of his illness—in fact, he had had nothing else to do, for the doctor would not let him use his eyes—and he had made up his mind that when he was himself once more he was going to begin life all over again, and naturally he was anxious to get to work. There was that in his face, however, that showed plainly enough that he had begun already, though he did not in the least suspect it; an earnest, thoughtful look that even bluff old Mr. Hartley was quick to detect.
“Seems like, to look at our new lodger, that he's mendin' in more ways than one,” he had said to his wife as they walked to the parish church on a sunshiny Sunday morning, the second after Ted's accident. “There's a kind of a light in his eye, as though he was meditatin' turnin' over a new leaf when he gets a chance.”
“He's turned it already, I'm thinking, Thomas,” answered Mrs. Hartley, with a woman's clearer discernment.
And it was on that same Sunday morning, just two weeks before, that Ted had made a discovery. Chris had staid home from church to take care of him, Harry Allyn, who had constituted himself Ted's nurse, having gone for a day or two up to Oxford, where some matters needed his attention. Ted was still in bed at the time, but tired enough of it, and glad to draw Chris into conversation.
“It is queer to think of you as in the employ of 'Uncle Sam,'” said Ted, who by this time had come to be on most friendly terms with Chris.
“I look as though I belonged right here, don't I?” said Chris, glancing down at his English suit of homespun. “But you ought to see me in my gray uniform and brass buttons. Really, Mr. Morris, fond as I am of the old people here, I often wish I were back at work again. It seems like my own country over there now, and I've grown to love it.”
“I don't know exactly—somewhere about the first of October. Same steamer, if I can manage it, with Marie-Celeste.”
“Marie-Celeste!” exclaimed Ted; and then, bethinking himself, he asked quite casually, “Who is Marie-Celeste, I should like to know?”
“Well, she's just a dear child, Mr. Morris—a little American of twelve or thereabouts—but there isn't a little girl in all England can hold a candle to her.”
“Can it be possible there are two little American Marie-Celestes in England this summer?” thought Ted; and then, trying with all his might not to betray his excitement, he asked further, “How did you come to know her, Chris?”
“She's on my route, Mr. Morris. Along of my being fond of children, I know all of the boys and girls pretty well at the houses where I call; but Marie-Celeste is different from the rest. She just takes your heart by storm, with her confiding, little trusting ways and her interest in you. Here's a picture of her, that her mother let her give me last Christmas,” and Chris began a search through many papers in his wallet for the cherished photograph. Meantime, Ted realized how weak he was, that such a matter as this should put him into a tremble; and later, when Chris gave him the photograph, he could only manage by the greatest effort to keep his hand from shaking as he held it, but the picture settled matters. From beneath the curve of a wide-brimmed hat looked forth the familiar face of his own little cousin, Marie-Celeste, and the color rushed up into his forehead.
“I guess I'm tiring you with talking so much,” said Chris; “I'll tell you all about her some other time;” and Ted, replying, “Well, somehow or other, I do seem to get exhausted precious easily,” turned over and closed his eyes.
“A nap'll do wonders for you, Mr. Morris;” and lowering the shades at the two ivy-grown windows, and adjusting the screen that stood near the bed, Chris left the room. But a nap, as often happens, would not do anything at all for poor Ted just then. It did not have the ghost of a chance, in fact. How could it with so many queer thoughts and sensations chasing each other pell-mell through his mind. Wouldn't Chris be surprised, he thought, if he knew that Marie-Celeste was his own cousin, and living that moment in Ted's own home was one of the precious company from whom he was anxious to keep all knowledge of this worst and last scrape. But he felt like a fraud, lying there in the Hartleys' dear little cottage, and letting them think him another man altogether from the fellow he really was. Indeed, he experienced the same sensation every time any one called him by the name of Morris, which had been the first name to occur to Harry Allyn, in his desire to shield his friend on the night of the accident. “And yet,” argued Ted, “I'm doing it to save the folks at home the disgrace of it, and Harry and Dr. Arnold seem to think it all right; and yet, I declare if I know myself what to think. And what a remarkable thing it is that I should have fallen right into the hands of this old friend of Marie-Celeste's! Like as not my secret will out some day in spite of me. It would have been out at once if Chris had not been so considerate as to keep himself out of the way, so that we did not meet that morning on the steamer. I wonder if I ought not to tell just Chris, anyway; but somehow or other I do not seem to have strength enough even to make up my mind, and I'll give up trying for the present;” and so, ceasing to make any effort whatever, the little nap that would not come for the asking stole quietly in and laid its blessed touch of oblivion upon poor, troubled Ted. Now, this discovery of Ted's, that Chris was a friend of Marie-Celeste, and the perplexing state of mind that followed, had transpired, you understand, two weeks previous to this particular chapter, and Ted, you remember, is lying on the chintz-covered lounge in the living-room, having gained strength enough in the mean time to walk from his bed to the lounge unaided. Mr. Hartley is reading his morning paper, sitting in the shade just outside the cottage door, with his chair tipped back against the shingles. Now and then, as he comes across anything he thinks will interest Ted, he lets the chair drop on to all-fours, shifts his position so as to bring himself into line with the door, and reads the article or paragraph aloud. Ted, amused, and grateful as well at the manner in which the old keeper has gradually softened toward him, always listens attentively, and courteously feigns interest, when he finds he cannot command the real article. Mrs. Hartley, still busy about her morning household duties, occasionally flits in and out of the room, and Ted's eyes follow her devotedly every moment that she is there. He has grown to love the dear old grandmother with the whole of his wayward heart, and she seems to him the embodiment of all that is calm and loving and benignant. Indeed, it were difficult to tell how much of the blessed change that has been gradually coming over Ted is due to her noble, placid face. He has sufficient knowledge of human nature to realize that nothing but years and years of noblest thinking and doing will bring that look into a face, and he finds his soul fairly bowing down before her. On one of these busy flittings of Mrs. Hartley's, Ted has detained her for a moment, to ask some trifling question, and just as she is about to make a reply, Chris, returning from his daily ride into Nuneham for the mail, swings into the room with his breezy, postman-like air, and empties the contents of the little Hartley mail-bag upon the table.
“It's all settled, granny dear,” he says, as he picks out two letters and hands them to Ted; “I've had a letter from Marie-Celeste and one from Mr. Harris, and he'll be down to-morrow on the three-o'clock train.”
“My goodness!” mutters Ted under his breath, staring at Chris a moment in blank astonishment, and then straightway pretends to be all absorbed in his own mail. One or two college bills, forwarded by Harry Allyn from Oxford, were all there was to it, for, alas! there were no home letters for Ted in these days of self-imposed exile from kith and kin. The bills, however, gave him a chance to pull himself together, as he made a ruse of carefully examining them, while his heart thumped like a trip-hammer at the thought of Uncle Fritz coming down to Nuneham and finding him stranded there, helpless, good-for-nothing fellow that he felt himself to be.
“You say you saw a great deal of him on the steamer, Chris?” said Mrs. Hartley, who had seated herself in the nearest chair, awaiting the budget of news that Chris always endeavored to bring out from Nuneham, for the enlivening of the old people.
“Yes, granny, a great deal. I really don't know how he would have managed but for me.”
“That's cool,” thought Ted; “I'm sure Uncle Fritz seems quite able to take care of himself.”
“And he's a good-looking little fellow, is he, Chris?”
“Good-looking and good-natured, granny dear; you'll take to him right from the start.”
Well, this was passing comprehension! Uncle Fritz a good-looking, good-natured little fellow; and forgetting everything else in his amazement, Ted turned from Chris to Mrs. Hartley, and back again to Chris, in hopeless bewilderment, while they, wholly unobservant, continued to converse in what seemed to him most idiotic fashion.
They talked about his illness, and of how kind Marie-Celeste and her Cousin Harold had been to him, and of what wonders they hoped Nuneham would do for him, and of how, for his own sake, they must continue to keep him busy in little matters about the farm.
“Really,” said Ted at last, able to stand it no longer, and looking pathetically toward Chris, “I don't mean to be inquisitive, but do I understand you that the father of your friend, Marie-Celeste, is coming here to your cottage to recruit from some illness, and that you plan to entertain him by putting him to work on the farm?”
If either Chris or Mrs. Hartley had been close observers of human nature, they would have been almost alarmed at the expression on Ted's face. It was as though he felt himself in some way impelled to ask a question which proclaimed him a pitiful lunatic on the face of it.
“Oh, dear, no!” laughed Chris; “I—”
“Well, that's exactly what you said,” interrupted Ted. “You said you had a letter from Marie-Celeste and one from her father, and that he'd be down on the three-o'clock train to-morrow.” Ted spoke petulantly, feeling it was inexcusable to scare a fellow half to death in that manner.
“Well, he, Mr. Morris,” ascribing Ted's petulance to the nervousness of slow convalescence, “happens to mean a little sailor boy who crossed on the steamer with us, and about whom Mr. Harris and I have been corresponding. It was funny enough that you should have applied all I have said to a man like Mr. Harris.”
Ted did not think it so very funny, and his face showing it, Chris continued in a half-apologetic tone, “I ought to have told you about him, Mr. Morris, and I thought I had and then, by the way of making amends, Chris proceeded to narrate all the details of Donald's various experiences in a way that was somewhat of a bore to one who knew it all as Ted did.
“Well,” he thought, when he was finally left to himself once more, it's out of the frying-pan and into the fire,' or something very much like it. Of course I'll have to take Donald into my confidence; but like as not he'll come suddenly upon me, and blurt out just who I am before I get a chance to give him a point or two. There's no doubt about it, 'the way of the transgressor is hard'—very hard indeed and with a grim sort of smile on his face, Ted gathered his dressing-gown about him, and with rather shaky steps sought the seclusion of his own little room.
The day for Donald's departure had arrived—that is, to the extent that the sun, rising clear and bright at four o'clock, shone alike upon the big castle on the hill and the little one beneath it. In the big castle, let us hope, since we may not know, that even crowned heads were resting easily, and that the level rays were powerless at that early hour to waken them to that sense of great uneasiness supposed to be inseparable from the lot of the “nobly born.”
But alas! I for one know to a Certainty that in the little castle there was rebellion almost amounting to mutiny, and that one curly, uncrowned head, that need not have had a care in all the world, was tossing uneasily on its pillow. It was behaving, indeed, like the most unruly little head imaginable, and obstinately refusing to accept a course of action which heads far older and wiser than the little head in question had agreed upon as in every way desirable. Indeed, the little queen, whose realm was the hearts of her nearest and dearest, would have been obliged to abdicate, for a while at least, I fancy, had she not chosen before nightfall of that same day to bury her head in the lap of her very most loyal subject, and with tears and sohs confess to her extreme unreasonableness and avow her determination not soon again to be overtaken by such a sorry state of mind and temper. Even Donald stared at Marie-Celeste in grieved and reproving wonder, and yet to all appearances it was all for Donald's sake, this defiant, protesting attitude of hers, and Donald knew it. The trouble was that Marie-Celeste did not see or would not see either rhyme or reason in Donald's being sent down to Nuneham.
She gave full rein to a certain “little member,” and working herself up to the highest pitch of excitement, gave vent in very aggressive fashion to such sentiments as these. For her part, she thought it was a downright shame to send a little fellow, who was just getting over a fever, away to work himself to death on an old farm, where he would surely be ill again before a week was over. And then it seemed so mean not to be willing to pay his expenses outright for just one summer, till he should be able to go to sea, instead of making him go to work and earn money in the mean time.
For her part, too, when somebody (which was Harold) stood ready only too gladly to pay Donald's way on the trip they were to take through the Lake Country, and was just longing to invite him, she thought it was cruelly unkind in somebody else (which was her father) to say he did not think best that he should be invited. If she were Harold, she just believed she would go right ahead as she thought best herself. She should think he had a right to do what he chose with his own without so much as asking “by your leave” of anybody.
And this unqueenly state of mind lasted, I am sorry to say, for three whole days together, to the dire distress of the truest hearts in her kingdom. And all this while the wilful little queen was trying to convince herself that it was ready for Donald's sake, when the truth was that the long walks with Donald, when Harold—who was making up some necessary back work at college—was not at her service, were what she was determined not to give up, and the reading aloud in the evenings, when Donald was such a delightful listener; and, in fact, the hundred and one little amusing things that Donald was continually doing, and that made the days go by in such happy, merry fashion.
If only at the outset some good little fairy might have held a magic mirror close to her defiant little mind, and she could have seen “selfishness” written large, right straight across all her motives, there perhaps need never have been this dark chapter in her reign. But lacking the fairies, some of us have to learn a good many things from experience; and though hard enough in the learning, the lessons are worth their weight in gold. Even queens have to goto the same school, and it is a blessed thing for everybody when its lessons are learned by heart and in a way to be always remembered.
But at sunset on the fourth day Marie-Celeste relented, and coming into the house with a white flag of truce at her eyes, threw herself at the feet of her dearest subject, and burying her head, as I have already hinted, in the lap of the same, capitulated body and soul.
Donald was gone. They had seen him off at the station—Harold and she—and Donald, never allowing himself for a moment to regard this whole affair in any light but the true one, kept a stiff upper lip to the last, and smiled the cheeriest good-by as the guard banged the carriage-door and the train glided out from the depot. Before he jumped on the train, however, he had whispered, as the last of many entreaties: “I know it's all for my sake, Marie-Celeste, but all the same, it's an awful grind on me the way you're acting; and if you don't come to see it so pretty soon, your father and mother will wish they had never let you do anything for me. Honor bright, Marie-Celeste, you're not fair to them or to me at all. Please give in as soon as you go home, and say you're sorry, because you are—you know you are.” And it was the “yes, I am” in Marie-Celeste's eyes, though her lips still firmly pressed each other, that made Donald's heart a thousand-fold lighter. And so, as you have read, Marie-Celeste did really give in, without so much as a mental reservation, and other hearts than Donald's were wondrously lightened, and there was joy throughout all the kingdom that the queen had come to her senses.
Meantime, Donald's train made good time to Nuneham; and there was Chris at the station waiting with open arms to receive him, and, what was more, he took Donald into them in a way that nipped in the bud those queer little misgivings that spring up unbidden when one chances to be leaving old scenes for new. And then when they reached the cottage, there stood dear old Mis, Hartley, looking the picture of motherliness in her snow-white cap and kerchief; and the welcome that she gave Donald made him feel beyond all doubting that he had but exchanged one dear home for another; and that meant worlds to a boy who had come to know for the first time what a dear place home might be.