CHAPTER XIII

HOME AT LAST

"I will arise and go to my father."

"Ach! ein Schicksal droht,
Und es droht nicht lange!
Auf der holden Wange
Brennt ein böses Roth!"--TIEDGE.

Eric Williams pursued his disconsolate way to the station, and found that his money only just sufficed to get him something to eat during the day, and carry him third class by the parliamentary train to Charlesbury, the little station where he had to take the branch line to Ayrton.

He got into the carriage, and sat in the far corner, hiding himself from notice as well as he could. The weary train--(it carried poor people for the most part, so, of course it could matter but little how tedious or slow it was!)--the weary train, stopping at every station, and often waiting on the rail until it had been passed by trains that started four or five hours after it,--dragged its slow course through the fair counties of England. Many people got in and out of the carriage, which was generally full, and some of them tried occasionally to enter into conversation with him. But poor Eric was too sick and tired, and his heart was too full to talk much, and he contented himself with civil answers to the questions put to him, dropping the conversation as soon as he could.

At six in the evening the train stopped at Charlesbury, and he got down.

"Ticket," said the station-man.

Eric gave it, turning his head away, for the man knew him well from having often seen him there. It was no use; the man looked hard at him, and then, opening his eyes wide, exclaimed,

"Well, I never! what, Master Williams of Fairholm, can that be you?"

"Hush, John, hush! yes, I am Eric Williams. But don't say a word, that's a good fellow; I'm going on to Ayrton this evening."

"Well, sir, I am, hurt like to see you looking so ragged and poorly. Let me give you a bed to-night, and send you on by first train to-morrow."

"O no, thank you, John. I've got no money, and--"

"Tut, tut, sir; I thought you'd know me better nor that. Proud I'd be any day to do anything for Mrs. Trevor's nephew, let alone a young gentleman like you. Well, then, let me drive you, sir, in my little cart this evening."

"No, thank you, John, never mind; you are very, very good, but," he said, and the tears were in his eyes, "I want to walk in alone to-night."

"Well, God keep and bless you, sir," said the man, "for you look to need it;" and touching his cap, he watched the boy's painful walk across some fields to the main road.

"Who'd ha' thought it, Jenny?" he said to his wife. "There's that young Master Williams, whom we've always thought so noble like, just been here as ragged as ragged, and with a face the color o' my white signal flag."

"Lawks!" said the woman; "well, well! poor young gentleman, I'm afeard he's been doing something bad."

Balmily and beautiful the evening fell, as Eric, not without toil, made his way along the road towards Ayrton, which was ten miles off. The road wound through the valley, across the low hills that encircled it, sometimes spanning or running parallel to the bright stream that had been the delight of Eric's innocent childhood. There was something enjoyable at first to the poor boy's eyes, so long accustomed to the barren sea, in resting once more on the soft undulating green of the summer fields, which were intertissued with white and yellow flowers, like a broidery of pearls and gold. The whole scene was bathed in the exquisite light, and rich with the delicate perfumes of a glorious evening, which filled the sky over his head with every perfect gradation of rose and amber and amethyst, and breathed over the quiet landscape a sensation of unbroken peace. But peace did not remain long in Eric's heart; each well-remembered landmark filled his soul with recollections of the days when he had returned from school, oh! how differently; and of the last time when he had come home with Vernon by his side. "Oh Verny, Verny, noble little Verny, would to God that I were with you now. But you are resting, Verny, in the green grave by Russell's side, and I--oh God, be merciful to me now!"

It was evening, and the stars came out and shone by hundreds, and Eric walked on by the moonlight. But the exertion had brought on the pain in his knee, and he had to sit down a long time by the road-side to rest. He reached Ayrton at ten o'clock, but even then he could not summon up courage to pass through the town where he was so well known, lest any straggler should recognise him,--and he took a detour in order to get to Fairholm. He did not arrive there till eleven o'clock; and then he could not venture into the grounds, for he saw through the trees of the shrubbery that there was no light in any of the windows, and it was clear that they were all gone to bed.

What was he to do? He durst not disturb them so late at night. He remembered that they would not have heard a syllable of or from him since he had run away from Roslyn, and he feared the effect of so sudden an emotion as his appearance at that hour might excite.

So under the star-light he lay down to sleep on a cold bank beside the gate, determining to enter early in the morning. It was long before he slept, but at last weary nature demanded her privilege with importunity, and gentle sleep floated over him like a dark dewy cloud, and the sun was high in heaven before he woke.

It was about half-past nine in the morning, and Mrs. Trevor, with Fanny, was starting to visit some of her poor neighbors, an occupation full of holy pleasure to her kind heart, and in which she had found more than usual consolation during the heavy trials which she had recently suffered; for she had loved Eric and Vernon as a mother does her own children, and now Vernon, the little cherished jewel of her heart, was dead--Vernon was dead, and Eric, she feared, not dead but worse than dead, guilty, stained, dishonored. Often had she thought to herself, in deep anguish of heart, "Our darling little Vernon dead--and Eric fallen and ruined!"

"Look at that poor fellow asleep on the grass," said Fanny, pointing to a sailor boy, who lay coiled up on the bank beside the gate. "He has had a rough bed, mother, if he has spent the night there, as I fear."

Mrs. Trevor had grasped her arm. "What is Flo' doing?" she said, stopping, as the pretty little spaniel trotted up to the boy's reclining figure, and began snuffing about it, and then broke into a quick short bark of pleasure, and fawned and frisked about him, and leapt upon him, joyously wagging his tail.

The boy rose with the dew wet from the flowers upon his hair; he saw the dog, and at once began playfully to fondle it, and hold its little silken head between his hands; but as yet he had not caught sight of the Trevors.

"It is--oh, good heavens! it is Eric," cried Mrs. Trevor, as she flew towards him. Another moment and he was in her arms, silent, speechless, with long arrears of pent-up emotion.

"O my Eric, our poor, lost, wandering Eric--come home; you are forgiven, more than forgiven, my own darling boy. Yes, I knew that my prayers would be answered; this is as though we received you from the dead." And the noble lady wept upon his neck, and Eric, his heart shaken with accumulated feelings, clung to her and wept.

Deeply did that loving household rejoice to receive back their lost child. At once they procured him a proper dress, and a warm bath, and tended him with every gentle office of female ministering hands. And in the evening, when he told them his story in a broken voice of penitence and remorse, their love came to him like a sweet balsam, and he rested by them, "seated, and clothed, and in his right mind."

The pretty little room, fragrant with sweet flowers from the greenhouse, was decorated with all the refinement of womanly taste, and its glass doors opened on the pleasant garden. It was long, long since Eric had ever seen anything like it, and he had never hoped to see it again. "Oh dearest aunty," he murmured, as he rested his weary head upon her lap, while he sat on a low stool at her feet, "Oh aunty, you will never know how different this is from the foul, horrible hold of the 'Stormy Petrel,' and its detestable inmates."

When Eric was dressed once more as a gentleman, and once more fed on nourishing and wholesome food, and was able to move once more about the garden by Fanny's side, he began to recover his old appearance, and the soft bloom came back to his cheek again, and the light to his blue eye. But still his health gave most serious cause for apprehension; weeks of semi-starvation, bad air, sickness, and neglect, followed by two nights of exposure and wet, had at last undermined the remarkable strength of his constitution, and the Trevors soon became aware of the painful fact that he was sinking to the grave, and had come home only to die.

Above all, there seemed to be some great load at his heart which he could not remove; a sense of shame, the memory of his disgrace at Roslyn, and of the dark suspicion that rested on his name. He avoided the subject, and they were too kind to force it on him, especially as he had taken away the bitterest part of their trial in remembering it, by explaining to them that he was far from being so wicked in the matter of the theft as they had at first been (how slowly and reluctantly!) almost forced to believe.

"Have you ever heard--oh, how shall I put it?--have you ever heard, aunty, how things went on at Roslyn after I ran away?" he asked, one evening, with evident effort.

"No, love, I have not. After they had sent home your things, I heard no more; only two most kind and excellent letters--one from Dr. Rowlands, and one from your friend, Mr. Rose--informed me of what had happened about you."

"O, have they sent home my things?" he asked, eagerly. "There are very few among them that I care about, but there is just one----"

"I guessed it, my Eric, and, but that I feared to agitate you, should have given it you before;" and she drew out of a drawer the little likeness of Vernon's sweet childish face.

Eric gazed at it till the sobs shook him, and tears blinded his eyes.

"Do not weep, my boy," said Mrs. Trevor, kissing his forehead. "Dear little Verny, remember, is in a land where God himself wipes away all tears from off all eyes."

"Is there anything else you would like?" asked Fanny, to divert his painful thoughts. "I will get you anything in a moment."

"Yes, Fanny, dear, there is the medal I got for saving Russell's life, and one or two things which he gave me;--ah, poor Edwin, you never knew him!"

He told her what to fetch, and when she brought them it seemed to give him great pleasure to recall his friends to mind by name, and speak of them--especially of Montagu and Wildney.

"I have a plan to please you, Eric," said Mrs. Tremor. "Shall I ask Montagu and Wildney here? we have plenty of room for them."

"O, thank you," he said, with the utmost eagerness. "Thank you, dearest aunt." Then suddenly his countenance fell. "Stop--shall we?--yes, yes, I am going to die soon, I know; let me see them before I die."

The Trevors did not know that he was aware of the precarious tenure of his life, but they listened to him in silence, and did not contradict him; and Mrs. Trevor wrote to both the boys (whose directions Eric knew), telling them what had happened, and begging them, simply for his sake, to come and stay with her for a time. She hinted clearly that it might be the last opportunity they would ever have of seeing him.

Wildney and Montagu accepted the invitation; and they arrived together at Fairholm on one of the early autumn evenings. They both greeted Eric with the utmost affection; and he seemed never tired of pressing their hands, and looking at them again. Yet every now and then a memory of sadness would pass over his face, like a dark ripple on the clear surface of a lake.

"Tell me, Monty," he said one evening, "all about what happened after I left Roslyn."

"Gladly, Eric; now that your name is cleared, there is--"

"My name cleared!" said Eric, leaning forward eagerly. "Did you say that?"

"Yes, Eric. Didn't you know, then, that the thief had been discovered?"

"No," he murmured faintly, leaning back; "O thank God, thank God! Do tell me all about it, Monty."

"Well, Eric, I will tell you all from the beginning. You may guess how utterly astonished we were in the morning, when we heard that you had run away. Wildney here was the first to discover it, for he went early to your bed-room----"

"Dear little Sunbeam," interrupted Eric, resting his hand against Wildney's cheek; but Wildney shook his fist at him when he heard the forbidden name.

"He found the door locked," continued Montagu, "and called to you, but there came no answer; this made us suspect the truth, and we were certain, of it when some one caught sight of the pendent sheet. The masters soon heard the report, and sent Carter to make inquiries, but they did not succeed in discovering anything definite about you. Then, of course, everybody assumed as a certainty that you were guilty, and I fear that my bare assertion on the other side had little weight."

Eric's eyes glistened as he drank in his friend's story.

"But, about a fortnight after, more money and several other articles disappeared from the studies, and all suspicion as to the perpetrator was baffled; only now the boys began to admit that, after all, they had been premature in condemning you. It was a miserable time; for every one was full of distrust, and the more nervous boys were always afraid lest any one should on some slight grounds suspect them. Still, things kept disappearing.

"We found out at length that the time when the robberies were effected must be between twelve and one, and it was secretly agreed that some one should be concealed in the studies for a day or two during those hours. Carter undertook the office, and was ensconced in one of the big cupboards in a study which had not yet been touched. On the third day he heard some one stealthily mount the stairs. The fellows were more careful now, and used to keep their doors shut, but the person was provided with keys, and opened the study in which Carter was. He moved about for a little time--Carter watching him through the key-hole, and prepared to spring on him before he could make his escape. Not getting much, the man at last opened the cup-board door, where Carter had just time to conceal himself behind a great-coat. The great-coat took the plunderer's fancy; he took it down off the peg, and there stood Carter before him! Billy--for it was he--stood absolutely confounded, as though a ghost had suddenly appeared; and Carter, after enjoying his unconcealed terror, collared him, and hauled him off to the police station. He was tried soon after, and finally confessed that it was he who had taken the cricket-money too; for which offences he was sentenced to transportation. So Eric, dear Eric, at last your name was cleared."

"As I always knew it would be, dear old boy," said Wildney.

Montagu and Wildney found plenty to make them happy at Fairholm, and were never tired of Eric's society, and of his stories about all that befell him on board the "Stormy Petrel." They perceived a marvellous change in him. Every trace of recklessness and arrogance had passed away; every stain of passion had been removed; every particle of hardness had been calcined in the flame of trial. All was gentleness, love, and dependence, in the once bright, impetuous, self-willed boy; it seemed as though the lightning of God's anger had shattered and swept away all that was evil in his heart and life, and left all his true excellence, all the royal prerogatives of his character, pure and unscathed Eric, even in his worst days, was, as I well remember, a lovable and noble boy; but at this period there must have been something about him for which to thank God, something unspeakably winning, and irresistibly attractive. During the day, as Eric was too weak to walk with them, Montagu and Wildney used to take boating and fishing excursions by themselves, but in the evening the whole party would sit out reading and talking in the garden till twilight fell. The two visitors began to hope that Mrs. Trevor had been mistaken, and that Eric's health would still recover; but Mrs. Trevor would not deceive herself with a vain hope, and the boy himself shook his head when they called him convalescent.

Their hopes were never higher than one evening about a week after their arrival, when they were all seated, as usual, in the open air, under a lime-tree on the lawn. The sun was beginning to set, and the rain of golden sunlight fell over them through the green ambrosial foliage of the tree whose pale blossoms were still murmurous with bees. Eric was leaning back in an easy chair, with Wildney sitting on the grass, cross-legged at his feet, while Montagu, resting on one of the mossy roots, read to them the "Midsummer Night's Dream," and the ladies were busy with their work.

"There--stop now," said Eric, "and let's sit out and talk until we see some of 'the fiery a'es and o'es of light' which he talks of."

"I'd no idea Shakspeare was such immensely jolly reading," remarked Wildney naïvely. "I shall take to reading him through when I get home."

"Do you remember, Eric," said Montagu, "how Rose used to chaff us in old days for our ignorance of literature, and how indignant we used to be when he asked if we'd ever heard of an obscure person called William Shakspeare?"

"Yes, very well," answered Eric, laughing heartily. And in this strain they continued to chat merrily, while the ladies enjoyed listening to their school-boy mirth.

"What a perfectly delicious evening. It's almost enough to make me wish to live," said Eric.

He did not often speak thus; and it made them sad. But Eric half sang, half murmured to himself, a hymn with which his mother's sweet voice had made him familiar in their cottage-home at Ellan:--

"There is a calm for those who weep,
  A rest for weary pilgrims found;
They softly lie, and sweetly sleep,
  Low in the ground.

"The storm that wrecks the winter sky,
  No more disturbs their deep repose,
Than summer evening's latest sigh
  That shuts the rose."

The two last lines lingered pleasantly in his fancy and he murmured to himself again, in low tones--

"Than summer evening's latest sigh
  That shuts the rose."

"Oh hush, hush, Eric!" said Wildney, laying his hand upon his friend's lips; "don't let's spoil to-night by forebodings."

It seemed, indeed, a shame to do so, for it was almost an awful thing to be breathing the splendor of the transparent air, as the sun broadened and fell, and a faint violet glow floated over soft meadow and silver stream. One might have fancied that the last rays of sunshine loved to linger over Eric's face, now flushed with a hectic tinge of pleasure, and to light up sudden glories in his bright hair, which the wind just fanned off his forehead as he leaned back and inhaled the luxury of evening perfume, which the flowers of the garden poured on the gentle breeze. Ah, how sad that such scenes should be so rare and so short-lived!

"Hark--tirra-la-lirra-lirra!" said Wildney; "there goes the postman's horn! Shall I run and get the letter-bag as he passes the gate?"

"Yes, do," they all cried; and the boy bounded off full of fun, greeting the postman with such a burst of merry apostrophe, that the man shook with laughing at him.

"Here it is at last," said Wildney. "Now, then, for the key. Here's a letter for me, hurrah!--two for you, Miss Trevor--what people you young ladies are for writing to each other! None for you, Monty--Oh, yes! I'm wrong, here's one; but none for Eric."

"I expected none," said Eric sighing; but his eye was fixed earnestly on one of Mrs. Trevor's letters. He saw that it was from India, and directed in his father's hand.

Mrs. Trevor caught his look. "Shall I read it aloud to you, dear I Do you think you can stand it? Remember it will be in answer to ours, telling them of--"

"Oh, yes, yes," he said, eagerly, "do let me hear it."

With instinctive delicacy Montagu and Wildney rose, but Eric pressed them to stay. "It will help me to bear what mother says, if I see you by me," he pleaded.

God forbid that I should transcribe that letter. It was written from the depths of such sorrow as He only can fully sympathise with, who for thirty years pitched his tent in the valley of human misery. By the former mail Mrs. Williams had heard of Verny's melancholy death; by the next she had been told that her only other child, Eric, was not dead indeed, but a wandering outcast, marked with the brand of terrible suspicion. Let her agony be sacred; it was God who sent it, and he only enabled her to endure it. With bent head, and streaming eyes, and a breast that heaved involuntarily with fitful sobs, Eric listened as though to his mother's voice, and only now and then he murmured low to himself, "O mother, mother, mother--but I am forgiven now. O mother, God and man have forgiven me, and we shall be at peace again once more."

Mrs. Trevor's eyes grew too dim with weeping, to read it all, and Fanny finished it. "Here is a little note from your father, Eric, which dropped out when we opened dear aunt's letter. Shall I read it, too?"

"Perhaps not now, love," said Mrs. Trevor. "Poor Eric is too tired and excited already."

"Well, then, let me glance it myself, aunty," he said. He opened it, read a line or two, and then, with a scream, fell back swooning, while it dropped out of his hands.

Terrified, they picked up the fallen paper; it told briefly, in a few heartrending words, that, after writing the letter, Mrs. Williams had been taken ill; that her life was absolutely despaired of, and that, before the letter reached England, she would, in all human probability, be dead. It conveyed the impression of a soul resigned indeed, and humble, but crushed down to the very earth with the load of mysterious bereavement, and irretrievable sorrow.

"Oh, I have killed her, I have killed my mother!" said Eric, in a hollow voice, when he came to himself. "O God, forgive me, forgive me!"

They gathered round him; they soothed, and comforted, and prayed for him; but his soul refused comfort, and all his strength appeared to have been broken down at once like a feeble reed. At last a momentary energy returned; his eyes were lifted to the gloaming heaven where a few stars had already begun to shine, and a bright look illuminated his countenance. They listened deeply--"Yes, mother," he murmured, in broken tones, "forgiven now, for Christ's dear sake. O thou merciful God! Yes, there they are, and we shall meet again. Verny--oh, happy, happy at last--too happy!"

The sounds died away, and his head fell back; for a transient moment more the smile and the brightness played over his fair features like a lambent flame. It passed away, and Eric was with those he dearliest loved, in the land where there is no more curse.

"Yes, dearest Eric, forgiven and happy now," sobbed Mrs. Trevor; and her tears fell fast upon the dead boy's face, as she pressed upon it a long, last kiss.