The Young Step-Mother Part 88

said Ulick. 'It is a precious letter to have. I hope you will keep it and read it often, and heed it too.'

'I can't read it,' said Maurice, ruefully. 'If I could, I shouldn't mind.'

'You soon will. You see how he tells you you are to be a comfort; and if you are a good boy, you'll quickly leave the dunce behind.'

'I can't,' said Maurice. 'Mamma said I should not do a bit of a lesson with Sophy, or I should tease her heart out. Would it come quite out?'

'Well, I think you've gone hard to try to-day,' said Ulick.

'Mamma said my being able to read would be a comfort, and papa says he never saw such an ignorant boy! so what's the use of minding Gilbert's letter? It wont let me.'

'What wont let you?'

'Fun!' said Maurice, with a sob.

'He is a rogue!' cried Ulick, vehemently; 'but a stout heart and good will can get him under yet. Think of what your brother says of making your father and mother happy!'

'If I could do something to please them very, very much! Oh! if I could but learn to read all at once.'

'You can read--anybody can read!' said Ulick, pulling a book out of his pocket. 'There! try.'

There was some laughing over this; and then Maurice leant out of window, and grew sleepy. They had descended into the wide basin of alluvial land through which the Baye dawdled its meandering course, and were just about to cross the first bridge about two miles from Bayford, when Maurice shouted, 'There's Sophy!--how funny.'

It was a tall figure, in deep mourning, slowly moving along the towing-path, intently gazing into the river; but so strange was it to see Sophy so far from home, that Ulick paused a moment ere calling to the driver to stop.

As he hastily wrenched open the door, she raised up her face, and he was shocked. She looked as if she had lived years of sorrow, and even Maurice was struck with consternation.

'Sophy! Sophy!' he cried, hanging round her. 'I wouldn't have gone without telling you, if I had thought you would mind it. Speak to me, Sophy!'

She could say nothing save a hoa.r.s.e 'Where?' as with both arms she pressed him as if she could never let him go again.

'In the train--intending to go to Malta,' said Ulick.

'I didn't know I could not; I didn't mean to vex you, Sophy,' continued the child. 'I'm come home now, and I wont try again.'

'Oh! Maurice, what would have become of you?' She held out her hand to Ulick, the first time for months.

'And we've got a letter for you, proceeded Maurice.

Ulick would fain have withheld it, but he had not the choice. She caught at it, still holding Maurice fast, and ere he could propose her opening it in the carriage while he walked home she had torn it open, and the same moment she had sunk down, seated on the path, with an arm round her brother. 'Oh! Maurice, it is well you are here! You would not have found them--it is over!'

She had found one brother to lose the other; but the relief of Maurice's safety had so softened the blow, that her tears gushed forth freely.

The sense of Ulick's presence restrained her, but raising her head, she missed him, and felt lonely, desolate, deserted, almost fainting, and in a strange place.

'Is he dead?' said Maurice, in a solemn low voice, and she wept helplessly, while the little fellow stood sustaining her weight like a small pillar, perplexed and dismayed.

'Are you poorly, Sophy? What shall I do?' said he, as she almost fell back, but a stronger arm held her up.

'Lean on me, dear Sophy,' said Ulick, who had returned, bringing some water from a small house near at hand, and supported her and soothed her like a brother.

The mists cleared away, the sense of desertion was gone, and she rose, but could not stand without his arm, and he almost lifted her into the carriage, where her appealing eye and helpless gesture made him follow her, and take Maurice on his knee. No one spoke; Maurice nestled close to his friend; awe-struck but weighed down by weariness and excitement.

The blow had in reality been given when he was forced to relinquish the hope of seeing his brother again, and the actual certainty of his death fell with less comparative force. Perhaps he did not enter into the fact enough to ask for particulars. After a short s.p.a.ce Sophy recovered herself enough to take out the letter, and read it over with greater comprehension.

'They were come!' she said.

'In time. I am glad.'

'In time to bring him peace, my uncle says! He knew mamma. I could never have borne it if I had deprived him of her!'

'Nor I,' said Ulick, from his heart. 'Did one but know the upshot of one's idle follies!'

Sophy looked towards Maurice.

'Asleep!' said Ulick. 'No wonder. He has walked four miles! He has a heart that might have been born in Ireland;' and as he looked at the fair young face softened and sweetened by sleep, 'What an infant it is to have even fancied such an undertaking!'

'Poor child!' sighed Sophy. 'He will never be the same!'

'Nay, grief at that age does not check the spirits for life.'

'You have never known,' said Sophy.

'No; our number has never yet been broken; but for this little man, I trust that the sense of duty may be deepened, and with it his love to you all; and surely that is not what will quench the blithe temper.'

'May it be so!' said Sophy. 'He may have enough of his mother in him to be happy.'

'I must think that the recollection of so loving a brother, and his pride in him for a hero, may make the stream flow more deeply, but not more darkly.'

'There never was a cloud between them,' said Sophy.

'Clouds are all past and gone now between those who can with him "take part in that thanksgiving lay,"' answered Ulick, kindly.

'Yes,' said Sophy. 'My uncle says it was peace at last! Oh! if humbleness and penitence could win it, one might be sure it would be his.'

'True,' said Ulick. 'It was a beautiful thing to find the loving sweetness and kindness refined into self-devotion and patience, and growing into something brighter and purer as it came near the last. It will be a precious recollection.'

'To those who have no self-reproach,' sighed Sophy; and after a pause she abruptly resumed, 'You once blamed me for being hard with him.

Nothing was more true.'

'Impossible--when could I have presumed?'

'When? You remember. After Oxford.'

'Oh! you should not have let what I said dwell with you. I was a very raw Irishman then, and thought it barbarity to look cold on a little indiscretion, but I have learnt to think differently,' and he sighed.

'The severity that leads to repentance is truer affection than is shown by making light of foolishness.'

'If it had been affection and not wounded pride.'

'The dross has been refined away, if there were any,' said Ulick. 'You will be able to love him better now than ever you did in life.'